Freelancing and unrelated frustrations

Besides looking for regular jobs, I’ve been trawling the freelancing website Elance.com, without luck, until Thursday. Someone needed something written, I showed them how I would handle it, and they liked my style and/or my price. This job will not make me rich, famous, or sublime, but I am now officially a freelance writer.

A website wants witty product descriptions. I saw that, and thought, “I’m witty.” I ran over to Amazon.com and wrote descriptions of a couple of items picked at random from Today’s Deals, and thusly my wit was demonstrated.

I’ll share one write-up that I did as a sample, because, well... anyway, here’s a riff on some earrings:

“Whatever the holiday, it’s always the right season to decorate your loved ones! Find the perfect shape and color for your favorite set of ears. Choose 6mm or 8mm gemstones for people with little ears or big ears. Choose round or checkerboard cut stones for people with round ears or square ears. Choose from all sorts of gems to look lovely on blue ears, red ears, green ears, or ears of any color. If you love anyone with ears, you’ve found the perfect gift for them.”

Yeah, someone wanted more of that.

I spent some time writing in more detail about the project, but then I thought better of it. Going into freelancing I think I’ll make the decision now not to talk about specific clients and jobs. While there would always be something to talk about, sooner or later that something would be unprofessional to get into. I’m going to try to be professional about this. I’ve never really been able to sell myself as the flamboyant rebel or bunny-ears lawyer.

Today contained a number of frustrations. Scanner trouble, for one, although that at least resulted in me getting some use of an upright HP Scanjet I got back in college. I’d fancied I might use it for my digital art ambitions, but I soon became less ambitious in that sphere. I also stepped on the stupid thing almost immediately (My college roommates who read this will not be surprised that that could happen.) and put radial cracks across the glass pane. Luckily, it seems the cracks were not in the business end, and it still scans fine.

Long story short, it’s nice occasionally to be glad you did something that didn’t work out like you wanted back when you did it.

Other frustration, not so easily resolved: the Xbox 360 died last night in the middle of a Skyrim session. So it goes. The game froze and I got graphical bugs like I hadn’t seen since the last time I saw an NES break down. At first I was ready to blame Bethesda (again) and rant about buggy A-list games. (Is it too much to ask, that in addition to being innovative, awesome, fully-realized, etc., etc., it also work?) Every time I reset, though, the freeze came faster and faster, until the box started dying before the console even read the disc.

These things happen. It was old, and I guess it was time to go. The fact that ever since I bought it I had to give it a good whack at just the right time to make the disc tray open probably didn’t prolong it’s life any.

Right now I could do without buying a new game console, but I bit the bullet and ordered the cheapest refurbished machine I could find that looked likely to work. I’m not broke yet.

How about that weather?

It's strange what specific memories can be called up by an exact feeling you'd forgotten ever having before. I'm going about my business when a place or a desire comes into my memory, apropos of nothing. I walked to the mall today to get myself out of the house, get some things, and treat myself to some food-court teriyaki.* (Sarku, incidentally, became a favorite commissary of mine back when I worked at the Northgate Mall. I definitely never expected one to turn up in Maryland, any more than I would expect to see a Taco Del Mar in Florida.** It feels like the Seattle embassy in Hyattsville.) Wow, I lost my train of thought. So, I was coming back from the mall, and as I was coming in the door I had the sudden urge to play a rented copy of Earthbound.

I rented Earthbound several weekends in, I think, the late summer and/or early school year of 1995. It's one of the games I just loved, and if it hadn't been for the hype around the Nintendo 64 I probably would have asked for it for that Christmas.***

I don't know exactly what brought this up. There are two sets of stairs between the street and my front door, now, just like there were then. Coming inside I felt a very particular change in temperature and odor. A specific, faintly musty smell on cool air always makes me nostalgic for my parents' basement, and that was some of it.

You might have noticed that the weather outside elicited my sense memory of a summer day on Long Island. I'm not a fan of the weather in Maryland right now. Today would have been a very pleasant day in late May, or a welcome reprieve in July, but on February 1 of a winter that's had approximately one inch of snow, I kind of resent it. Not least on Girlfriend's behalf--shouldn't she get a snow day or two. I don't think getting your third day of school off for earthquake repairs really compensates.

Until next time.

* Firefox's spell-check doesn't seem to recognize "teriyaki," but it suggests I change it to "sukiyaki." What an odd lexical phenomenon.
** There are those, too. Seattle's not that special, apparently.
*** I did get it for Christmas eventually, with Chrono Trigger. A very good year in that regard. This was back when there was a place called Funcoland, and before I realized that the price of a video game can go up as it gets older, otherwise I would have produced a more merciful Christmas list.

The rules, they are a-changin'

Over the last three weeks I've been making various changes to my personal contract, as the need has warranted. Various things, like needing to make a doctor's appointment, have made me experiment with ways to move requirements around to make room. Taking up judo turned out to complicate things a bit, because all told it takes four hours out of my day. Some days have seen me skip it, and others have involved late nights catching up. (Another complicating factor has been my inability to get out of bed as early as I should.) I've had to account for the couple of nights when, for one reason or another, it just wasn't a good idea to stay up as late as it would take to finish everything. I made a lot of changes, sometimes several times in the same day as I thought of better ways to implement what I had in mind. My desk contains a decent stack of the different versions I've printed out and signed.

All that said, I consider this contract a success. It's given my days structure and forced me to be productive most days to a degree that I used to be pleased with achieving once a week. It's kept me from going stir-crazy. I've managed to keep to the essential rule, that I would amend it and sign a new copy rather than violating it, and that has kept me from blowing the contract off. Even if I meant to lighten the load a bit, having to sit down and write out what I intended kept me from taking the sort of advantage that I would regret later.

Today I made the biggest change to the contract, and cleaned up and streamlines the other provisions along the way. The main change was to make room for judo by removing two hours of work from the days when I practice, and adding an hour to my Saturday requirement. I cleaned up the language concerning holidays and days when I missed my quota. If the exact language is of interest to you, here it is:


I intend, upon signing, to follow the terms set out in this contract. I will not act contrary to this contract without first amending the contract and re-signing an updated copy. I will not abolish this contract without printing and signing a statement to that effect.

In case of an emergency I can suspend this contract for no more than the current day. (The contract can be suspended on subsequent days by a decision made on that day.) Barring cataclysm, I will resume or amend the contract promptly and in good faith.

I. This section will apply while I am not employed at a regular job.

A. Definitions:

1. “Pursuing work” means:

a. Searching for or reading job listings.

b. Preparing job application materials.

c. Applying for jobs.

d. The aforementioned activities in regard to health insurance, if I have no health insurance or need to change it.

e. Searching for or arranging paid writing opportunities. This does not include the actual writing of the projects or their pitches, which would fall under I-A-2.

2. Writing and editing.

a. “Edit” means to examine material I have written while making improvements, marking improvements to be made later, or taking notes of improvements to be made.

b. “Write” refers to the production of new words, whether drafting, freewriting, outlining, or rewriting.

c. Research, online or otherwise, is permitted, provided it relates directly to a question that arises during the course of writing or editing, and I return promptly to writing or editing when the question has been resolved.

3. “Reading” refers to reading fiction or nonfiction, for pleasure or edification. It includes the reading of physical codices, e-books on an e-reader, or printed material. It explicitly does not include the reading of material on a computer screen.

4. “Appointment” means a scheduled task or meeting outside the home which, including travel, takes two or more hours. Events which may be considered appointments include doctor visits and martial arts classes. “Appointment” may also include attending to business with bureaucratic entities such as the Department of Motor Vehicles, whether or not scheduled, if the task, including travel, takes two or more hours. It does not include regular errands such as shopping trips, regardless of duration.

B. On weekdays when I do not attend an appointment:

1. I will spend no less than two hours pursuing work.

2. I will spend no less than four hours writing or editing.

3. I will spend no less than one hour reading.

4. I will not browse the internet recreationally, play video games, or read (as defined in I-A-3) beyond the one-hour requirement until I have met the requirements of I-B-1 through 3, except that I may do these things during a one-hour break, which I may only take after completing at least two combined hours of the tasks in I-B-1 or 2.

C. On weekdays when I do attend an appointment (normally Tuesdays and Thursdays when I attend a martial arts class):

1. I will spend no less than one hour pursuing work.

2. I will spend no less than three hours writing or editing.

3. I will spend no less than one hour reading.

4. I will not browse the internet recreationally, play video games, or read (as defined in I-A-3) beyond the one-hour requirement until I have met the requirements of I-B-1 through 3, except that I may do these things during a one-hour break, which I may only take after completing a combined two hours of the tasks in I-B-1 or 2.

D. On Saturdays:

1. I will spend no less than three hours writing or editing; or, I will spend no less than two hours writing or editing and one hour pursuing work.

2. If I have not posted to my blog since the preceding Saturday, I will do so before midnight. Time spent writing or editing a blog post will count toward time spent writing or editing that day.

3. I will not browse the internet recreationally or play video games until I have completed at least one combined hour of the tasks in I-D-1.

E. For the purposes of completing the tasks required in this section I, a day is considered to end when I go to sleep for the night.

F. In the event that, after midnight, I cannot reasonably or should not complete the tasks required in this section I before going to sleep for the night, one-half of that day’s total requirement in any uncompleted task will be added to the requirement for the next nonexempt day.

G. Exempt days. I will not require myself to perform the tasks required in this section I on exempt days. Exempt days are:

1. Any Sunday.

a. When it is clearly helpful (and not merely to accommodate a lack of motivation on my part) I may make Saturday an exempt day instead of Sunday, for that week only, and perform the tasks required by I-D on Sunday instead of on Saturday.

2. Valentine’s Day, Easter, Girlfriend's birthday, my birthday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

3. Days when I am on vacation. “Vacation” refers to periods where I stay overnight somewhere other than my regular home, and the days spent traveling to or from the place of the vacation. Days spent attending a convention, such as PAX, will also be considered vacation days even if I stay overnight at my regular home.

H. Half days. On half days I will reduce the time required for all tasks by one half; except I will not reduce the amount of any time requirement carried over or transferred from a different day as permitted by I-F or I-G-1-a. Half days are:

1. School holidays when Girlfriend has the day off from work, not including Summer Vacation.

2. Independence Day, Election Day, the Friday after Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day.

II. This version of this contract supersedes previous versions. I activate and engage the contract by signing below.



Other than that, not much to report.

Sequel Syndrome

I'm admittedly late to the game with this, but there's something baffling to me about movie sequels. I just watched Ip Man 2 and, while I don't want to run that movie down too much, it got me thinking about this again.

I call it a syndrome, first, because "sequelitis" is taken. TV Tropes offers a wide but not comprehensive list of symptoms and occurrences. Second, I call it a syndrome because I, at least, can't pin down a single cause. (Perhaps, like many modern diseases, the underlying pathogen is confirmation bias.) Sometimes a sequel's just worse. Sometimes there's someone or something you can blame, but not always.

So, I liked Ip Man a lot. The story has some parts that you can only accept because it's a kung-fu movie, and other parts that are just absurd. It is, at heart, the story of a man who overcomes adversity by boldly being able to. Still, there were some genuinely subversive moments that made it good to watch even when nobody was punching anyone.

I only heard about Ip Man, though, because of a glowing review I read of Ip Man 2 in Seattle Weekly. The sequel's score stands well above the original's on Rotten Tomatoes, so I was quite excited about 2 after seeing 1.

Girlfriend caught it before I did, but Ip Man 2 is basically Rocky IV. (Actually I think if Sylvester Stallone had thought to go to Sammo Hung for his fight choreography from Rocky II on, the world would be a substantially better place.) It also occurred to me belatedly that the original audience wouldn't have identified at all with the white antagonist, making the movie possibly less morally complex than it had even seemed at first. I am actually aware of nothing that Ip Man 2 does better than its antecessor, which is why it's so weird to me that the critics should prefer it. Is there something wrong with movie critics? (I notice that RT's audience ratings line up better with my own opinion, which lends itself to that theory.)

Anyway, Ip Man 2 has the same writer and the same director as Ip Man, as well as rather too much of the original cast. As a writer (finger quotes optional), I'm inclined to say it lands at the feet of the writer, but I can't say what constraints he, or anyone else, was working under.

It might be useful to look at some other sequels that suffer from similar symptoms. Sherlock Holmes, Iron Man, and Casino Royale all recently yielded inferior sequels. The first two changed writers, and the last one changed directors. Yet they all seemed to fall flat on so many levels, including what just looked like lazier editing from the returning directors and lazier scripts from the returning writers. Were they bored?

(I'm also of the opinion that the whole problem starts with The Godfather Part II, but if you think that that one was better than the original I won't fight you over it.)

Thankfully there have also been some recent exceptions. Carriers, if you will. Spider-Man and Batman Begins both had sequels that were actually better. Spider-Man changed writers completely, but Batman kept the same writers and added Jonathan Nolan to the mix (and I'd be surprised if he didn't have any influence on the first one). However it was done, neither one of them slackened off.

(On a side note, The Dark Knight Rises apparently has the same writing team as The Dark Knight, which, according to the evidence examined so far, suggests that... nothing.)

There's one common thread among all of these. It's subjective, but we're talking about art, so, yeah. A sequel basically has to have a new character, since a good original takes its cast to the natural result of their interactions.

The new character has to be strong enough to change the dynamic of the movie. Otherwise you just end up with your sequel's protagonists retreading the same arcs they went through last time. See Quantum of Solace, in which James Bond relives the last five minutes of Casino Royale, chasing down a bad guy who's so inert that the big reveal about his evil scheme doesn't make 007 bat an eyelash. See The Godfather Part II, whose most interesting character is dead before the movie starts, and whose present-day storyline unfolds pretty much exactly the way the end of the first movie implied it would.

On the other hand, need I go into a long explanation of the significance of the Joker in The Dark Knight? Or, take the progenitor of superior sequels, Terminator 2. The important new character in that movie actually isn't the T-1000 or John Connor; it's the original Terminator, back but with a completely new set of motivations.

On the other other hand, there's the sequels whose new characters are just weird and annoying. Not to name names.

And while the quality  of the new characters is more of an indicator of overall quality, it's not perfect, and it still looks like another symptom, rather than a definitive cause.

Nor can we just say that a franchise/character/premise has run out of good ideas. Iron Man 2, Ip Man 2*, and Spider-Man 3 (sigh) both suffer from an overabundance of plots. What they needed was to be pared down so that subplots would have room to grow naturally, instead of being crowded out by competing real plots.

I could go on like this but I think my thesis is still that the cause is still unknown. Study must continue, though, for only then do we stand a chance of finding a cure.

* I feel the need to point out that Ip Man, unlike the other entries in this list, is a person's actual name. While I admit to comic book heroes being overrepresented in this post, he is just a real person with a name that's a bit unfortunate to Anglophones.

You are what you eat

It's almost Saturday again, and I'm trying to think of something to post other than that nothing much has changed since the last time I posted. I've made incremental progress on a lot of things. I've been researching video games (no, really) for another article pitch, and brainstorming adventure ideas. Plugging away at Nenle and Death. At least some parts of it have gotten to where I want them.

One disappointment is that the whole 72-hour response thing I expected from Paizo turns out to be a very old estimate. Like other venues, the normal wait can apparently get into months. So, I am still waiting, and coming up with other ideas mainly as a change of pace from other sorts of writing.

I've wanted to take a page from Alexandra Duncan's book (her metaphorical one, not her real one) and make a list of my media intake over the year. Where it seems to get tricky is that I haven't finished anything since the beginning of the year. Should I add something to the list when I start it, or when I finish it? What if I stop? Also, what if people who give me presents read my blog? What if I don't get around to reading or watching or playing everything I have? That's not really a what-if at all. I think I will always have a backlog of media, as I find things interesting at a significantly faster rate than I take them in.

On further thought, I figure I might as well try it. I can always take it down if I decide it's too much trouble. So, the guideline I'm using is that if I go to it twice, or finish it, it's on the list. This is to keep things off that I pick up once and never go back to. Things (like League of Legends) that I only do once but am pretty certain I'll go back to make the list too, though I'm more lenient about video games than books or television, and if I don't get back to the media in question in a reasonable amount of time I'll take it off the list. Anyway, I'm not going to claim to be reading Pope's translation of The Odyssey because I'm far from sure I'll pick it up again. Not to speak ill of Mr. Pope, of course, but in this day and age a little bit of that sort of thing goes a long way.

Lately I've been watching The X-Files. Almost at the end of season one. Skipped the episode about the Jersey Devil because of some sort of technical issue, or possibly boredom. Girlfriend and I came to the show as a compromise. We were looking at Netflix. I wanted Star Trek: The Next Generation, and she wanted Law and Order. I think we found a pretty satisfying middle ground.

I remember coming to that show very late (it premiered when I was eight). I think David Duchovny was gone already at that point. I liked it then, so I'm generally liking the older stuff a lot. Not that it's all good. There was the bit with the sentient computer that communicated entirely in sinister computer puns. And I think that "Born Again" and "Roland" may in fact have been the same script used two weeks in a row.

I was singularly impressed with "Beyond the Sea," which, as the 13th episode, I believe would have been the series finale if things hadn't taken off. It would have been a good one if that were the case. For one thing, it turns out that I really like Brad Dourif (and by "really like" I mean that when he wants to, he terrifies me). Mostly, or largely, though, it was a meditation on evil and skepticism and desperation that completely ruined my mood in the way that good art sometimes should.

I  haven't spent nearly as much time as I've wanted to playing Skyrim, which is almost certainly a good thing. My opinion, on the whole, has been going up. Just after I started complaining that the world was too safe, I started hitting monsters that scared me, and even ran away from the end of one boss fight to come back to it in a few levels. I still don't much care for anyone I've met yet though.

Want/Do not want

Dipping my toes in the waters of trying to get things published, I've learned some interesting things. My first pitch to Cracked got turned down, on the basis that its appeal would be too narrow. I understood that. Someone's got to look at the bottom line. But I realized something important.

I didn't want to publish that article.

I wanted it to be published, yes. But the concept was a little weak. The research was a little thin. Without the flag of a major comedy website to fly over it, I don't think I would have been willing to put it out there with my name on it. I wanted someone to tell me it was a good idea, but in a vacuum, I wouldn't have called it a good idea myself.

It will return as an item in a broader, better article pitch.

Now, yesterday, I was having a little fun. I was doing some of my obligatory writing for the day but at the moment I wasn't feeling right to work on Nenle and Death (I got to it later). I happened upon something I knew about already: a poem called "The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den."

It's a neat little poem written in Classical (i.e. 2,000-year-old) Chinese, made up entirely of tonal variations of the sound "shi." It was whimsical and amusing, but the translations I found were clinical and not much fun to read in their own right.

Having some time on my hands and needing to write, I adapted the translations I could find into my own "translation," which was less accurate but more fun, I thought. Now, I used the word "translation" enquotedly there because I can translate Chinese like I can translate Koala, which is to say that I cannot, even a little. I took the thrust of the translations I read and gave them a rhyme and a rhythm.

The end product amused me, so I decided to post it here. First, though, I checked something. I discovered, to my surprise, that while it's written in a 2,000-year-old dialect, the poem is from the 1900s, by a linguist named Chao Yuen Ren. He was illustrating the whimsical point that simple romanization won't work for Chinese languages. The point, though, is that the poem is not in the public domain, and, much to my dismay, I can't just do whatever I want with it. So, sadly, my adaptation, which I think has the potential to get a smile out of someone, can't legally see the light of day for 15 to 40 years, depending on whose copyright laws apply. It made me sad.

This was the same day my Cracked pitch got nixed. The difference in feeling was an interesting lesson in the difference between wanting to publish, and wanting to be published.

Other people

Yesterday and today I went ahead and did some things. Not that I hadn't been doing anything before. The contact, for example, is definitely a thing. What I mean is that I've taken some steps that involve other people. As many of you know, other people and I do not always get along, and initiating contact with other people almost always makes me incredibly nervous. This is often what holds me back at the 90% mark.

I am agreeably sore today because last night I visited the College Park Judo Club, which I had been meaning to do since I got here. It's a big club, but I got a good impression of the sensei I met and the other new guy I worked with. I swallowed my pride (because the number of years I've studied and the number of things I know more belie my skill level than attest to it) and went through the beginner paces (which I was herded into when the class started, everyone scattered to do different things, and I ended up slightly bewildered). I think I'm discovering that wherever you go to train, its a good idea to go through the beginner lesson, because everywhere has a slightly different take on the fundamentals. I didn't need to be shown how to fall, inasmuch as I definitely knew enough not to break my neck, but I got in more falling practice than I've ever done at a stretch, maybe (but likely not) excepting my first day at Fudoshin Dojo as a 12-year-old white belt. I got some pointers I hadn't heard before, so I'm glad I did it. Same with grappling and throws, when we got to those. Actually, about half the beginner batch of judo throws are new to me, or ones I could never get the hang of.

Anyway, that was last night. Today I prodded an editor or two at Cracked, because my got lost in the shuffle. (I'm not being kind to myself there. There actually was a shuffle--a huge batch of posts got moved above it on the submission forum all at once. I expect the article to get turned down,* but it looks like so far it just got missed.)

I also finally submitted my first pitch for a Pathfinder adventure to Paizo. So, we'll see how that turns out, too.

One thing that's neat about these two venues is that the operate on internet time. I actually expect feedback this or early next week on both pitches. I think the days of articles sitting on editors' desks for 60+ days are coming to an end.

Oh, I almost forgot. This will probably be the post up when I hit my 1,000th pageview. I think I've already commented on how that's cool, but also a very small number on the internet. Oh well. It can only go up.

*I rewrote that phrase after I looked at it. It originally read, "I expect to get turned down." It occurred to me that I should remember that it's my pitches, not me, getting judged.