noise."State of the Writer--late October 2018 · 10:48pm Oct 26th, 2018
Or, what has the Admiral been up to the last couple of weeks?
‘Cause I’m sure y’all have noticed that the blog posts and story updates have kind of dropped off during the second half of October.
Well, I’ve been busy. So busy in fact that I haven’t even had time to do a long, ranty blog post about my boss’s pure genius--he explained to me a while back how Sweden is an island, for example. I said that it wasn’t, that it was on a peninsula, and he said that peninsulas were like islands . . . which I guess means that the state of Michigan is an island. Well, two islands, really. The point was, he assured me, is that Sweden is surrounded by water on three sides.
On top of that, we’ve had one of our best Octobers ever at work, despite the owner playing three card monte with everybody’s cheese. At the beginning of the month, he finally heard our pleas to get a second mechanic at the shop, because we were simply swamped with work and couldn’t keep up with it. We’d sometimes have a car for a week before it got looked at or worked on.
So he loaned us one of his guys. They weren’t too busy over there, apparently, and with that guy we managed to get caught up for once. That was nice while it lasted, but then one of his other guys quit. We weren’t sure that he’d really quit; he’d threatened to more than once in order to get a pay raise or more vacation time or whatever, and the owner had given him what he wanted . . . well, this time it was for real, and we had to give our guy who was on loan back.
Luckily, we got a new guy! He started two Mondays ago, and he was supposed to be out at our shop first thing in the morning, except he wasn’t, because the owner decided to keep him at the other shop to do oil changes and stuff, so we didn’t get him until noon, and by then we were already behind.
He’s not everything that we could have hoped for. The guy’s worked for like 20 years as an oil change tech, and oil changes and tires are pretty much all he knows. Still, that’s better than nothing, and better than having me do oil changes instead of something that’s actually profitable.
We got caught up and then got behind because he called in sick on Thursday, and my manager had decided to just put everything there was on the schedule now that we had a new guy.
This week, he got stolen for the other shop on Thursday (so far I’m seeing a pattern of us not having him on Thursdays), and he was supposed to be over there on Friday, too, but for once my manager’s bossiness and overbearing nature won the day, and we got him back for Friday, and it was a good thing, too. Thursday, I didn’t leave work until two hours after we’d theoretically closed, and our schedule for Friday looked worse . . . . but we got it all done.
Did I mention that we’ve had our best October ever, sales-wise, and it’s not even over yet?
Episode Screencap
So that’s really cut into my writing time and answering comments time and some people have also noticed that I’ve been fairly absent from Discord.
Couple of updates that y’all might have missed. First off, next year at Bronycon there’s plans to have a bookstore selling actual print copies of various author’s works. I am intending to participate. Silver Glow’s Journal is not an option; it’s too long . . . I already checked with a couple of book-making companies in terms of the likely page count. What I’m thinking of doing is Celestia Sleeps In, the Sam and Rose stories, and not sure what to do for a third. I could do a collection of SoL stories if that’s something that people would like. But if y’all have different ideas, I’d be interested in hearing them.
Other projects that might have missed your notice: Horizon is running something called Back When Tigers Used To Smoke, which if I’m reading the blog post correctly is a collab project along the lines of The Book of Imaginary Beings. I think he’s still accepting ideas, but I’m not entirely sure.
Excitingly (for me, at least), Pinkie Pie’s Last Nightmare Night is the fic of the month over at Tag-a-long’s Book Club. This makes me happy.
Finally, Jinglemas time is upon us once again!
I have one project that I wanted to publish on or about Halloween, and honestly there’s very little chance of it actually being done by then. It might be completely written, but even if it is there’s no way it’ll be edited. I’ll keep y’all posted on that. Maybe I’ll keep it in the hopper until next Halloween (of course, that’s what I did with it last year), or maybe I’ll publish the first chapter on Halloween and do updates on a semi-regular pace after that.
I’ve also got the next chapter of OPP out to pre-readers. They’ve looked at it and made comments and I haven’t had time to do anything with those comments.
I do have the weekend off (yay!) and that’s gonna be one of the things I’ll do.
I also recently published an update to an older story that basically nobody read. I’m not gonna tell you which one it was. 
But I’ll let y’all know when I push the next two through . . . one of ‘em has Hannah Hawes in it.
I’m going to close this with a teaser from an upcoming story. And I’m not gonna give you any other context.
“A marina? Like where boats dock?”
“No, Marina like the orca-pony. Look, see how I’m moving my ear, that means it’s a name and not a thing.”
“Wait, you’re telling me that ear movement is how you tell names from nouns?”
“Yeah. In case you were wondering why I can never figure out if you’re talking about a pony or a piece of furniture.”
“You ponies are silly.” You stand up and Daring flies off her bed and lands on the floor. “Okay, but we’re not going to drink too much and we’re going to be sure that you’re ready for your speech, okay?”
“Yes, Banana.”
Ok if ear movements are part of language how do blind ponies or those who are hard of hearing survive in this society?
At least you can now drive from Sweden to Denmark in the same day, never mind the same Week.
I think Im starting to see a pattern here. You dont have enough mechanics. Maybe need to 3D print a couple to try them out? If they cant handle the stress, 3D print a dozen more?
wow, just wow.
well, at least that's some extra money coming in.
that should be interesting. Hopefully I'll be able to make it next year.
4958507
How do deaf or blind human's survive in our society? (body language makes up a lot of the fine meaning of our interactions). It's much harder for them but they learn to use other ways of getting the same information.
Uh, Discord? I've never seen you on around on FimFiction or the other writerly servers they let the hoopleheads join. Is there a suuper serkit Biscuit server out there?
YAY! Bookification commence!
<rereads> Only at Bronycon.... awwwwww.... Any chance of spares going up for sale afterwards?
I might manage to go around reading and commenting the last one before that.
Second person again?
Ewwww... that is a german engine if i ever saw one! What with the valve covers held with bales and what not.
Too bad you can't do Silver Glow's Journal as a series of books, as if she ran out of space while writing and had to use a different physical journal...
and
Stupid VW Beetle engine...
I vote for the "first chapter on Halloween, update subsequently" plan.
Split Silver Glow’s Journal into two books? Had that done with The Life and Times of a Winning Pony and Backgroud Pony.
I liked the update. I'm the curious kind, so I'd probably open anything Prompt's Revenge
For anyone who’s interested in how I found it, you can search by author and order by last updated
Hang in there.
Ha, my city (Saint-Petersburg) can be seen on this map! But I'm not social enough for reaching out..at least today I prefered to spend my morning with my dog and not meeting IRL with some brony from Moscow.
Orca-pony <- here my imagination fails me..I understand 'normal' Orca beings a bit [last time I was looking at those matter Russia had some captive, recently-captured, Orcas .... :/ I'm afraid to look up their fate, because, as it turned out, once captivity industry started it really hard [impossible?] to actually stop/reverse it ... and by 'looking' I mean there was petition to free Narnia, and I was part of delegation trying to deliver all this printed petition signatures to formal owner of orcas.. and whole new shit. And of course it failed ...and further catastrophe was ahead of time ...but meh , I think I better to spell this out because I'm not Ric O'Barry and you will not find my name in all those newsfeeds... ] but imagining any non-comical and functionating pony-orca hybrid [in universe where impossible hybrids are norm] is really hard for me ..
>you
Eurgh.
Literally any second-person story can be doubled in quality by changing instances of "you" to "John".
That first picture looks like he's, um... mounting the engine. No, the other kind.
Also, because it's a useful gif:
78.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m13la1Yc5u1r1b6b6o1_1280.gif
4958688
That's basically whatever I do when I encounter a 2nd-person story that seems highly-rated enough and with an appealing enough synopsis to overcome that it's 2nd-person.
Without really giving it much thought, I treat "you" as a proper name that happens to also have meaning as an English word, like "Rose" (noun), "Chase" (verb), or "Slim" (adjective).
(No SG-1 "Who's on first" jokes surrounding Lord Yu, please.)
4958507
In this case, Daring’s pulling Hannah’s tail (or lack of).
Having said that, 4958513 does bring up a good point; even in English and other human languages, there’s an aspect of body language to it that blind people can’t see and have to learn to adapt to.
4958509
It’s true, we don’t. And apparently the lack of mechanics is getting to be a more serious problem each year . . . which is good for those of us in the field, I guess. Should I choose to move on, I won’t have any difficulty finding another position somewhere else, possibly with quite generous terms.
4958512
Quite so. I know it’s a good week--financially, anyway--when I’m on overtime before the end of work on Thursday . . . which has been the case for most of October.
If you do, be sure to stop by Quills and Sofas--that’s where I can most often be found. Also who knows, I might have a panel next year where I impart my wisdom on all of y’all.
4958516
I tend to avoid Fimfiction mostly, although I am theoretically a member on that server. Mostly it’s the super secret ones, although none of my own yet. Not sure how I make my own Discord server, to be honest.
4958517
The way I understand the project, authors provide the published works, so of course if there were extras I’d be interested in selling them afterwards. I’m no so vain (yet) that I’d want to have a bookshelf of only my own stuff in my house.
4958544
That’s one thing I’d considered, a collection of SoL stories. I hadn’t thought of putting comedies in it, but maybe that’s not a bad idea.
4958569
The way things are currently looking, you’ve probably got a week or thereabouts.
No reasonably person would consider the west side to be ‘surrounded.’ IMHO.
Well, it is a Hannah Hawes story, so yeah.
4958570
The funny thing is that I bet those german bail-retained valve covers didn’t leak as much as GM’s bolted ones.
4958585
I could (although I don’t know how much market there’d be for that), but given the rules for the book club, if I did Silver Glow’s Journal, that’s all I’d be able to do.
4958964
That is a very true statement...
4958602
I’ll fix it, thanks!
Well, I did include a hashtag suggesting that typos would be present.
4958612
Something I’ve had the misfortune to work on. Well, it was in a VW van, but basically the same thing.
4958615
I’m not opposed to that plan, and if I manage to get everything accomplished this weekend (which is very much a possibility at this point, yay!), that’s probably what I’ll do.
4958643
It’s doable, but I don’t think that’s what I’d want to sell at the Bronycon Bookstore. I think that’s got a more limited market than some of my other stuff.
4958651
Glad you did! It’s the first thing I’ve published in a long time that got literally no comments.
Got two more queued up for that story, the one I teasered and another one as well. Both waiting for me to proofread them, and probably gin up a blog post.
4958657
I’ll get through it--it’s not the most busiest I’ve been. It’s just kind of frustrating that it’s cutting into my writing time.
4958676
Well, I’d say that meeting some brony from Moscow is being social, so that’s something.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2017/3/25/1395955__safe_artist-colon-kellythedrawinguni_oc_oc-colon-marina+%28efnw%29_oc+only_compass_cute_female_mare_ocbetes_orca+pony_original+species_seashel.png
4958688
I don’t disagree in general terms, but when the rules of the contest that the first story was entered in were very specifically second person FiE, that does limit the POV, and I’ve generally found for myself anyways, continuing series in the same POV as the first story was works the best.
4958719
Some mechanics really get into their work, you know.
I should spring that on my boss someday.
4958919
I oftentimes just flip it to ‘I’, which works well enough.
In this case, you can totally substitute “Hannah” for “you.”
4958975
It's the same here. Still the fact that you write at all is pretty cool.
I know the feel bro.
4958978
Why wpuld you enter a contest to write garbage?
4958967
And I’ll be honest, with three Chrysler minivans, I can’t say that their valve cover gaskets are much better.
4958983
What can I say, I like writing, and apparently people like reading it, so it’s a win/win.
4958986
Ah, see, there’s the thing, it wasn’t garbage. The idea of the contest was to take something that wasn’t highly regarded and to make something good of it. Which, I’d like to think I did, ‘cause i won the contest and came up with a memorable enough character (for me, anyways) that I wrote a little sequel to it.
And really, if we’re talking garbage, I’ve got plenty of crackfics and trollfics that are much better qualifiers for the title. The ones where at least one of the early comments is “goddammit, Biscuit.” Or the ones that say things like “Blueshift made me do it,” or “For anonpencil.” Or the one I wrote because Bad Horse made me (he’s a bad horse).
4958980
Thinking of it in those terms would require allowing it take up enough of my attention to ascribe meaning to it, rather than just treating it as an opaque identifying token.
4958994
Which I'll never read because it's second person garbage
4958977
Ah, so basically like pony-dolphin, just ...orca-ish more. You can wonder what exactly they eat, then ....
4958987
My old amc jeep 4.2 leaks like crazy, my sbc 350 leaks a bit, the federal doesnt but it also.doesnt have a valve cover. haha
4958963
*cough* West *cough*
4958990
Can't argue with that.