Today I was bad and had a snack that technically put me over my goal for the day. It was still better than spending the day stuffing cakes into my mouth, but still. I was not overly active, either, though I did get out to the store. Exciting adventures all around.
I was down but will likely be up tomorrow due to weighing myself earlier in the morning and also that snack thing.
Weight: 164.6 pounds
Body fat: 18.6%
The Gate at Lake Drive by Shaun Meeks
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
One of the benefits of this kooky ebook thing is how it’s made it easier than ever for new authors to get their work out before the public. What was once a terrifying trip on roads filled with insane drivers, followed by navigating the madding crowds at the mall before arriving at your favorite bookstore outlet to look for and purchase a new book–hopefully they had it in stock if you didn’t call ahead–is now just a couple of clicks on a website. You can do the entire thing with one hand, even, like so many other fun activities.
The ease of getting books out there and the much more variable pricing–many new authors opt to discount their books well below what typical bestsellers go for as enticement–means the reader has a greater selection of choices than ever before.
All of this can be summed up as: sometimes I see a book by an author I’m unfamiliar with and the price is low enough that I am fine with taking the risk that the book will be a stinker.
The good news is that the eminently affordable The Gate at Lake Drive is not a stinker. The less-than-good-news is that author Shaun Meeks would have benefited from a sharper editor and another pass to strengthen recurring problems with the writing, primarily the use of unnecessary modifiers that serve to sap the strength from the prose. Told in the first person by monster hunter Dillon, the writing is often weakened by unneeded verbiage. I’m not saying adverbs are a prime evil as Stephen King would have you think, nor do I believe that every story needs to be written with a Hemingway-level obsession with being lean to the point of minimalist, but The Gate at Lake Drive is filled with equivocation, describing things as slightly this or somewhat that, giving the prose a mushy feel. Sometimes it’s better to just be direct and not worry that your writing will come off as spartan.
The Gate at Lake Drive is set to be the first of a series of books featuring monster hunter Dillon, who brands himself as a monster detective. His rationale is presented thusly: “And calling myself a monster detective beats the hell out of monster exterminator or buster or whatever else you want to call it. A detective seems slightly more serious in my opinion.” But he then adds “I called my site Monster Dick, knowing that eventually people will run a search on it and then BOOM, there I am in front of you.” The contradiction here–wanting to appear “serious” then using the terrible pun of “monster dick” to lure in potential customers (do people seeking large male members online often have monster problems?) feels less like a character quirk and more something the author thought was funny and simply determined to make work.
Now, with this pun being so prominent, I expected the story to be presented in a light, funny manner. And it is, sort of. The tone is light, with Dillon making regular sarcastic asides, but the humor never feels fully committed to. And that may be my biggest issue with the book. On the one hand, Dillon is a veritable dervish with his daggers and magical demon-fighting equipment, slicing and dicing and dispatching monsters with ease, yet he is also a paunchy virgin who somehow attracts a burlesque performer and instantly they fall for each other because who knows why? All of this is great material for an absurd, over-the-top story, but it never really takes off and the main reason is the way the character of Dillon tells the story. He is a cipher (there’s a twist) but also kind of bland. Meeks doesn’t exploit the the conflict between his bad ass monster-fighting and his allegedly awkward way around women. Instead, there’s an instant romance, sex (mercifully not described) and none of it connects because there’s no work done to connect it. It just happens.
A stronger editor would have helped, too. As someone who regularly bumbles through his own rewrites and misses things that are glaringly obvious, I can appreciate the fresh eyes of a skilled editor to see things an author doesn’t. There are numerous typos and other errors, problems with continuity–Dillon dons gloves at the beginning of one scene then mysteriously doesn’t have them on later in the same scene–that should have been caught and corrected.
The Gate at Lake Drive has the ingredients to be a fun romp but the different pieces never fit together as well as they should. The romance is the very definition of tacked-on. It almost feels like an entire subplot is missing. It’s obvious Meeks enjoys the character of Dillon, though, and with a stronger editor, I’m certain his next entry in the series will be an improvement.
Today was my cheat day. I took in what would be considered a normal (non-diet) amount of calories for a typical guy (2000). I had a donut.
I felt bad afterward. This is a good sign.
My weight was unchanged and my body fat was down so slightly as to be meaningless. I shall cherish the very tiny drop nonetheless.
Weight: 165.2 pounds
Body fat: 18.4%
I had chicken strips and fries for lunch today but did enough walking to work most of it off and managed to avoid all snacking for the day. I ended my eating with a light chicken dinner and managed to come in under my calorie count.
Tomorrow if the weather plays nice I may try doing a full walk at lunch like back in the olden days of two months ago.
I was down 0.7 pounds today as well, which if nothing else is in the right direction.
Weight: 165.2 pounds
Body fat: 18.5%
Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free by Charles P. Pierce
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Idiot America is a book filled with little that will surprise anyone who has been watching the devolution of U.S. politics, debate and public thought over the last forty (or more) years.
Pierce uses a series of events–the war in Iraq, the Terry Schiavo life-support battle, efforts to give “intelligent design” (creationism) equal footing in public schools–and couples them with observations and actions regarding the necessity of intelligent government and an informed, educated populace from the founders of America to paint a bleak picture of the current state for what passes for discussion (he argues there is little to no actual debate) in the current U.S. landscape. It is a relentlessly bleak picture, punctuated by the occasional triumph that shines like a diamond in a bin of coal.
Pierce presents his premise as such: intellect and expertise have somehow become regarded as undesirable qualities, things to be mistrusted or rejected outright. It is more important to have a president you’re comfortable having a beer with than one who can make nuance, evidence-based decisions on matters of foreign and domestic policy. The soundbite is better than the essay, hair is more important than the brain that resides beneath it.
Pierce argues that the gut (or Gut, as he calls it) has come to dominate thinking, with emotion displacing rationality and logic, where cranks who once had an audience no larger than the people passing by listening to them exhort their conspiracy theories on a street corner now have the wide reach of cable television and the instant access of the Internet to project their lunacy. At times caustically funny and by turns surprisingly lyrical, painting scenes with the care of a novelist, Pierce offers example after example of how idiocy has become ascendant.
As I read the book I found myself alternating between a sense of frustration and outright anger. The length to which people–who should be intelligent adults–fully and completely reject intelligent thought for ridiculous, easily-debunked hokum, is at times astonishing. If some fabrication is repeated often enough, Pierce says, it takes on the patina of truth. If enough people believe and believe fervently enough, it becomes indisputable fact. Actual facts no longer have any effect on these believers. People simply stop listening. There is no debate, there is no reaching out, there are only sides yelling at each other over who is right.
This is a depressing but important book. As I said at the beginning, there are no real surprises here, but Pierce catalogs the problems and hammers his points home. Given the circus that is the current group running for the Republican nomination for president, and given the wholesale manufacture of fiction in the guise of endless reality TV shows, it’s hard to believe that the situation is improving, but perhaps we can draw some hope that it can hardly get worse.
I had two small chocolates at work today but compensated somewhat by doing a lot of running around between buildings. According to Fitbit I burned enough extra calories to write the chocolates off. If I can go to bed without stuffing a coconut cream pie into my face I should be good.
I was down slightly, from 166.2 to 165.9 pounds. It’s a start, even if it’s within the range of a rounding error.
Weight: 165.9 pounds
Body fat: 18.5%
Today I cheated a little. After ingesting fewer calories than recommended for a healthy diet, I rounded out the day with a handful of chips (an actual small handful, not three full bags that would fit in the palm of a hill giant) and a Clif bar. This still kept me under my calorie count for the day and I resisted any kind of snacking until after 8 p.m.
I’m reasonably confident I can keep on track. Reasonably.
Today’s starting stats:
Weight: 166.2 pounds
Body fat: 18.5%
This year I started out tipping the scales at a portly 171.3 pounds before slimming back down to 150.4 pounds in early August, less than half a pound away from my target goal of 150.
Today I weigh 164.5 pounds, still down for the year but ballooned up like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade float compared to where I was in the summer. What happened? Well, obviously I started taking in more calories than I burned. Coincidentally, my weight gain picked up at the same time I stopped running due to my leg injury (I now have separate leg and foot issues I need to address before I start running again but I will go into the waist-down details of that in another post).
Running has tow bonus effects when it comes to weight loss. The first is, of course, the calorie burn. Each run I would typically burn anywhere from 700-1200 calories. Consider that right now I am trying to stick to 1500 calories a day and you see how this can make a pretty big (ho ho) difference. The second benefit is that the time spent prepping for a run, doing the run and then undoing the run (showering, etc.) is not spent eating. In fact I will usually end a run with my appetite almost suppressed, though I may be thirsty if it’s hot or humid out. This means on run days (normal schedule three times a week) I take in significantly fewer calories while also burning off more.
But the return of fat has not come mainly from a lack of running. It comes from a decided non-lacking of snacking. This is to say that I regularly open my mouth and shove all manner of not-exactly-low-calorie edible products into it, ranging from potato chips to snack bars to cookies, muffins, cake and occasionally even reasonably healthy low-cal stuff like yogurt and fresh peas.
But mostly cookies, strudel and other deliciously awful foods. I’ve decided to get back on the non-snacking wagon again but instead of making it a New Year’s resolution, I’m starting on December 1st, which is in four days. When the first week has passed I will report back with my inspiring tale of success in weight loss.
Legion by William Peter Blatty
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
In 1983, twelve years after The Exorcist, William Peter Blatty wrote Legion, a sequel of sorts that switches focus away from Regan MacNeil to the rumpled, philosophical and schmaltz-loving police detective William Kinderman as he investigates a series of gruesome murders in Georgetown. The novel presents the possibility that the supposedly deceased serial killer known as The Gemini Killer (modeled after the real-life Zodiac killer) has somehow started murdering again. As Kinderman investigates he begins to see signs that tie the new killings to the events surrounding the exorcism of Regan more than a decade earlier.
Kinderman is a character Blatty obviously loves writing about and it shows throughout Legion. The detective goes from long ruminations on the nature of evil to complaining about a live carp his mother-in-law is keeping in his bathtub (she likes her fish fresh). As the body count rises and Kinderman heads into the psych ward of a hospital looking for leads, things turn increasingly dark before coming to a head when it seems no one is truly safe from the killer or killers. Blatty has characters fighting to determine what is real and what isn’t as the demonic influence strengthens. Although I never found the novel especially scary, it is unnerving and the suspense toward the end is well-executed (pardon the pun). The prose often has a lyrical, dream-like quality to it, most obviously when Kinderman or others muse about life, the universe and other suitably cosmic topics.
Legion manages to retain many of the same strengths The Exorcist had while standing apart as something more than just a sequel. If you’ve read The Exorcist and enjoyed the character of Kinderman, Legion is easy to recommend.
Some idle thoughts on the budding holiday season:
That’s about all for now.
Technically I didn’t forget since I’m writing this and it’s still a few minutes before midnight. I was all prepared to write something fascinating, had the blog composition window open, and then got distracted fooling around with Word and WriteMonkey. I think I’ve decided to go back to WriteMonkey for Road Closed because a) it’s already in WM format b) I’m used to WriteMonkey and c) I’ve discovered a few more handy WM features I can use for the novel.
More on actual writing tomorrow.
National Novel Writing Month Autopsy Report
Autopsy Number 1
Name Weirdsmith
Body Identification Novel
Date of Birth November 1, 2015
Date/Time of Death November 18, 2015
Coroner Creole Ned
Cause of Death Fatal lack of interest
Due To Lack of planning
Due To Lack of motivation
Yesterday I officially declared my 2015 NaNoWriMo attempt dead. What caused its tragic demise? Read on for more (or skip to the TL; DR summary at the end, I won’t mind).
For months I wavered back and forth on whether or not I would participate this year. I finally decided that if I was in the middle of writing something and going like gangbusters (what are gangbusters, anyway?) I would keep writing and skip NaNoWriMo, as it seems silly to suspend one writing project for another without having a really good reason for doing so.
Come the latter half of October and the only thing I was writing were inane posts to my blog. I promised myself back in August that I would write every day, whether it was posting to my blog, working on a short story, writing on a forum or handcrafting a nuanced grocery shopping list. I’ve kept to this (writing every day, not handcrafting nuanced grocery lists), mainly by writing on my blog. The posts vary in quality and quantity, but I’ve written something every day for the past three months, even if it was sometimes no more than “here’s an amusing cat image I found”. Establishing the discipline of writing every day was important. I hoped this routine would smooth the way for my return to writing fiction, but apart from a few writing prompts, that didn’t happen.
So here it was, mid-October and I was ready to take part in NaNoWriMo again, to get the ol’ fiction juices flowing. Don’t ask what fiction juices are, you don’t want to know.
Here’s a summary of my NaNoWriMo efforts to date:
You may have noticed a pattern here. In all but one case I totally cheated by adapting existing stories or ideas. NaNoWriMo discourages this and my success rate–2 out of 5–is not compelling anecdotal evidence that it’s a good strategy.
As the days went by I cast about for ideas, looking through my old stories, idea files and cans of fiction juice. Nothing grabbed me. Nothing called out to be written. Not even a grocery list.
Finally, on October 31 I re-read my unfinished play “Weirdsmith” and at 10 p.m.–two hours before NaNoWriMo 2015 officially began–I made the decision to take the play and adapt it as a novel.
The first problem came up the next day. I didn’t particularly like either of the two main characters in the play. I decided to jettison them and replace them with the couple from “The Dream of the Buckford County Church.” I’m a big believer in recycling. It’s good for the environment and lazy writers.
I wrote 1,745 words on Day 1, with the opening scene left hanging at a tantalizing point, so I’d be eager to jump back in the next day. But the next day I did not jump back in. The opening scene was limp and uninspired. There were wiener jokes. I’m not philosophically opposed to wiener jokes, but when you start a novel with them, you’re perhaps looking more at a novelization of an Adam Sandler movie more than writing your own daringly original work. I sat out Day 2 to ponder my next move.
On Day 3 I wrote a new opening scene, jettisoning the two characters that had replaced the previously jettisoned characters. It was like the story was built on a foundation of ejector seats. This time I wrote from the viewpoint of Weirdsmith (William Smith) himself. It felt better, though I only had a vague inkling of how the already vague story would proceed.
On Day 4 I pondered my new direction. I pondered for the next five days after that. I finally wrote part of a second scene on November 10. Then I pondered some more. I knew I wasn’t going to jettison Smith, because the story would be jettisoned along with him and that would be the end of it.
Yesterday, November 18th, I jettisoned the story, realizing there was no way I was going to finish by November 30, and more importantly, feeling strongly that my time would be better invested in other efforts.
So what went wrong? Here’s my quick analysis, in handy list form:
That’s pretty much it: poor planning, flat writing and in the end all I had was something I wasn’t interested in pursuing. It was kind of like visiting some place you’ve always dreamed about going to and when you finally get there you realize you can make better tacos at home. Or something like that.
Anyway, my plan for next year is to write a novel about writing a NaNoWriMo novel. It should be a breeze.