I lost my voice, have you noticed? I expect I haven’t quite earned the right for anyone to notice my voice just yet. I’ve been too sporadic for that. For the record though I’m back—rejuvenated. And after a sufficient amount of procrastination behind me I have grand plans to pick up the ball I dropped four months ago, that is to blog more consistently—at least once a month.
I got caught up in the publishing wave, swept away if you will, by the flowing tide of new and interesting reading produced by this ever accelerating age of information. I use the term “new” here loosely, it means new to me. This includes material produced at any time which I was formerly unacquainted with. It includes traditionally published material as well as amazingly helpful blogs, plus all the latest social buzz on Twitter, Facebook and the likes. All that combined, the mountain of characters, words, paragraphs and pages is approaching Everest in sheer magnitude, and in awesomeness.
The thing is there are so many fantastic options to choose from I can't possibly hope to read them all let alone just keep up with the new releases. I’m more likely to summit Everest, which, let’s be honest, ain’t ever gonna happen. Sometimes I feel guilty—like I didn't do my homework—when I find great new stuff that’s more than a year old. And it’s hard not to compare myself to others and end up lacking, especially when I listen to them talk or write from the depth of their knowledge. This is the dilemma I was faced with: information overload. And if I couldn’t keep up why should I expect anyone else to read what I write—I mean seriously who am I? My creative desire to add more to the mountain was crushed under the weight of what’s already out there. My voice was silenced.
Or was it? Looking back I don’t think it was. What happened is that other things were louder and drowned out my voice. How do I know that? Because my desire to write persists. What was lacking was a clear direction, something to write about. As I’ve been mulling over that topic—read into that procrastinating—I’ve been reading and watching some interesting TV shows. I even started reading comic books again. And even though I can’t consume it all—heck I have a pile of cool stuff that will most likely last me till summer—I can easily find something worthwhile, something good.
The thought of finding something good, anything really, amidst the plethora of what is and has been produced is my new focus for the coming year. Each month I will write about something that sticks out to me, anything good. The best part about this plan is that it requires me to look on the bright side, to see cups that are half full. I’m excited to take this challenge.
To start things off I have three good things worth writing about:
Number 1: On November 10, 2011 if you missed the book bomb started by Larry Correia for Rob Wells’ book Variant you missed something truly inspiring. People around the internet banded together to see how high they could push Variant on Amazon’s best sellers list. Variant went from #6068 to #57 in one day, it climbed to #7 in its genre. See Larry Correia’s blog for more details.
I bought a copy of Variant on Nov. 10 and as soon as I received it my wife took it. She read it in less than a week—she loved it. I’m currently reading it and it’s great.
More than the book though I was impressed by how a single person could unite so many people via Twitter, Facebook and blogs. There is amazing power here that can be harnessed for good. Larry’s book bomb is a perfect example of this power.
Number 2: One of the comics I recently started reading is The Walking Dead. I’m not a big zombie fan but I was immediately sucked in. In the introduction to “Volume 1 Days Gone Bye” Robert Kirkham lays out his goal: “With THE WALKING DEAD I want to explore how people deal with extreme situations and how these events CHANGE them.” That sets the tone perfectly for the story. It’s about how people deal with difficult situations in their lives first, and zombies second. It’s that people element that is compelling. The zombie part is good for a little scare here and there.
After I read "Days Gone Bye" I realized that AMC produced a series based on the comics. And much to my dismay it’s already in season 2. How did I miss season 1? Fortunately I caught the entire first half of season 2, which is on a break until February 12, 2012. During the midseason finale (season 2 episode 7 “Pretty Much Dead Already”) there was an amazingly dramatic moment that is so compelling it has been stuck in my mind for weeks. So many things happened at the same time: I was angry, surprised, happy, and sad all at the same time. That scene alone is worth watching all of season 2 so far. In my writing I hope to be able to create such a compelling scene someday.
If you haven’t seen The Walking Dead AMC has a full series marathon scheduled for New Year’s Eve 2011, this Saturday. It includes all of season 1 and season 2 up to this point—this is how I plan to catch up on season 1. I recommend using TiVo and watching them in smaller doses. I like to dilute my zombie watching with something less tense in between episodes, two episodes back to back is about as much as I can stomach in one sitting.
Number 3: I took my daughter to The Muppets at a local movie theater a couple nights ago. She mentioned just after Thanksgiving she wanted to see it. My response at that time was eh, I don’t think so—shame on me. Luckily I read Howard Tayler’s review, and noticed a lot of tweets about how much people liked it, so I decided to give it a chance. I’m so glad I did. There are lots of good movies—good in varying degrees: pretty pictures, fun scenes, good stories, and sometimes stories that impact you and stick with you, and even change you or help you on your journey through life. This movie was funny and nostalgic but it also left me feeling better than I felt when I sat down to watch it. My favorite quote from The Muppets is “It’s easy to believe in other people. Sooner or later you gotta believe in yourself.” What a great message that hit me right at my core. It really is so much easier to believe in others than it is to believe in yourself. Since I decided I was going to write a novel these kinds of messages have been popping up at the most fortuitous moments. Maybe the messages are always there and it’s up to me to notice them. Or maybe I’m just looking for something to spur me on. I could probably find negative messages too—resistance—if I focused on looking for them. But even if both positive and negative messages are out there why not focus on the positive ones? I need all the help I can get. The negative messages—the resistance—is no help at all.
That’s it for my preview of Anything Good that comes along, now and into the next year.
So, from here on out I refuse to feel guilty about my past omissions and will partake of the veritable smorgasbord of reading/viewing material as best I can. Hopefully I'll choose from the most delectable options because I'll be over-stuffed long before the content runs out. And maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to add my own dish to the buffet, contributing something someone else will find enjoyable. But if not the journey will add savor and spice to my literary and media life experiences just as well.
