(no subject)

It's coming up on four. I haven't been asleep yet tonight. I think it's safe to say that I'm well and truly in the midst of an insomniac episode right now. I'm alert and awake, so at least it seems to be the "good" kind for now. Zombification will probably come later.

When I got up, I thought about sitting down and hammering out some writing but I'm finding my mind is turning to money matters instead.

There's always some guesswork involved in figuring out a particular fundraising drive goes over well or poorly. Invariably, the people who are most willing to share with me the reasons they're not contributing to the current fundraiser seem to have used a different name/email address combination for their comments and correspondence than they used for their past contributions... that makes it hard to judge the actual impact.

I don't really blame anyone for not kicking anything into the can right now. The timing is all kinds of awkward, and I've been awkward about it. But I'm up against the familiar brick wall of "need money to live" here... I think I've got a pretty fair system. I don't go around asking people for money when I'm not working. Ideally I'd be sitting a little more securely in the saddle before I started asking this time, but there's that brickwall.

I'm hoping that as I turn out more consistent updates (even if I end up sleeping eight hours during the day I'll still be on track for one today) people will pitch in some more. If not, it might be time to switch up the incentives because the voice tracks don't seem to be appealing to people like I thought they would.

I think in the future going forward I'm going to focus more on the basics: I write, I get paid. I get paid, I write. The quarterly fundraiser will still exist, but as more of a booster than a substitute for fundraising in the months in-between. The big exciting competitive things like the Roommate Derby are big and exciting and competitive, but they're also draining and tend to steal my focus towards running the vote even as they're lighting a fire on me. Maybe the voting/competition thing would work best as an annual/semi-annual thing.

Also, I frequently bite off more than I can easily chew when it comes to trying to add incentives on top of the basic "I am providing entertainment and also I need money to live." thing. The problem with coming up with a list of a dozen or so particular bonus stories is that I'm coming up with a list of a dozen stories I'm excited about right at that moment, but I'm not able to write them right at that moment and I have no idea what the next three months are going to look like for me, in terms of real life impacting my writing time, in terms of creative energy, in terms of other ideas coming along and exciting me...

These are the things that are going to influence my future fundraising. For my past fundraising, I'm still going to work my way through the stories that I piled up during them. I have a specific notion about how to handle things in the future, but I'm going to give my habit-rebuilding efforts a little more time before I talk about that.

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Edit To Add: Right after I submitted this, it occurred to me that I need a new mental/emotional approach to the people whose names I can't match to past donations but who have such definite thought about my business model, and that's this: the fact that I ask for money for my stories is the price people pay for reading them. Note that the price isn't that anyone has to pay me anything, it's that they have to put up with me asking.

Been reading reviews of Batgirl #1...

...and one note I keep seeing cropping up is frustration that Barbara Gordon alludes to a "miracle" that lets her walk again and never explains it, leaving the reader to imagine whether this is some kind of backwards-talking magic or nanotech nanoprobic nanites or purple rays or what.

Um, I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess: there is no mystery. She wasn't being coy, she was stating a simple truth. The miracle she's referring to is the fact that she can walk, that she recovered in the space of a few years from a spinal injury that in another life might have left her paralyzed for the rest of her life. It's not something that medical science could perfectly predict or force; ergo, it's a miracle.

I'm not a fan of this particular retcon, or the rationales behind it, but everything about it's been handled... from comments by Gail and the rest of the DC staff to the fact that living with the injury's ongoing effects is apparently used as plot points in the comic... points to the fact that there is no "magic unbullet" at work here.

Grant Morrison, you sly devil.

Going on what I've gleaned from previews and reviews:

In Morrison's brand-new Action Comics #1, Superman catches a speeding bullet, overpowers a train, and leaps over a tall building in a single bound (how do you do it in more than one bound, I wonder? Does it involve landing on a set-back and then leaping again, or some kind of video-gamey "double-jump"? I'd think the latter case would be more impressive than a single bound. But I digress*.)

It's not at all lampshaded. Nobody says the words "faster than a speeding bullet!" or "more powerful than a locomotive!" It's just... there. It happens.

That's the sort of thing that anyone might slip into a Superman comic. But it seems Morrison doesn't stop there. Somewhat more obscurely, his Superman is injured by nothing less than a bursting shell. By a bursting shell, in fact. Morrison has made no secret of the fact that he wants a Superman who can bleed, but his choice of weapons is not accidental. The artillery shell is every bit as much of a classic Superman power benchmark as the other three, though it ceased to be repeated as his invulnerability grew.

(Strangely, the one about leaping stayed even as he became capable of gravity-defying flight.)

So, yes... I think it's safe to say that Morrison is taking Superman squarely back to his roots here.

Wednesday, September 7th.

News For Today

Yes, that's a second update to Tales of MU this week. And yes, I am going for the trifecta. Next week I am *probably* going to dial it back to the Tuesday and Friday update schedule that seems on the surface like it should be the easiest to manage, but that I've usually stumbled badly. Because of that fact I'm not finalizing my plans yet. I think I have a handle on what I've done wrong and what I've done right in the past.

The main thing I did wrong was not having a plan for what happens when I don't need the extra slack time it affords me. See, the idea behind the two updates a week thing is that I spend two days a week on each chapter. This gives me 2.5 chapters a week, so I should be building up a backlog. But then I finish a chapter in one day. It happens. But it also kind of throws me off, because the pressure is off. The idea is that posting slightly less often than a sustainable writing output will let me build up a backlog over time, but when I suddenly find myself at the start of the week way ahead... the gears slip.

The obvious answer is "don't do that"... keep writing like the deadline is ever in front of me, even when it's not. But the human brain can't just jump tracks like that... these things are skills that need to be cultivated. And the thing about working without a net is that you fall.

I think I've fallen enough times to work out how to stay up there a little bit better. If not... if I find the gears slipping, if I find the pressure easing off past the point of usefulness... I'll adjust plans. That's the real key here.

State of the Me

Insomnia is a harsh mistress. I'm never glad for episodes, but... well, I'm kind of glad I'm managing one now. If this week were unfolding in the midst of a perfect week where everything's going just right, I'd be more worried about crashing and burning as soon as I hit the next speedbump.

In the past I've relied a lot on a mixture of coasting through the calm times and using desperation as fuel during the rough times. What I'm trying to do now is cultivate "all-weather" habits, and the weather here right now actually couldn't be rougher. I'm not sleeping, my legs hurt, Jack is dealing with serious work-related stress issues, and I'm basically trying to restart my business, which means I'm skating on close to broke. I'm doing my best to completely ignore all that when I'm writing, and it's working pretty well.

Plans For The Remainder Of The Week

Tomorrow I'm going to lead off a chunk of writing on Kin & Distant Relations and then some writing on Chapter 30. The exact balance of time spent on each is going to depend on which is flowing better... I could see myself knocking out most of Chapter 30 (especially as it's inheriting a snippet already written), or knocking out most of K&DR (as it's already a work well and truly In Progress.)