Good evening, friends! It’s 6:30PM on the first Tuesday of 2024. I’m full of words and pizza. Let’s see which I pour into this blog post.
Personal News
Today began a bunch of pair programming with one of my developers. I’m trying to build him back up, and it started rough. We had a fundamental disagreement, and he wasn’t seeing where I was going with the project until late in the day. When he finally saw it, it was very satisfying. We’ll continue the pair programming tomorrow.
There’s some other stuff I would love to talk about, but I’ll save it for another time. I think that my commitment to writing a blog post every day is helping my general outlook, because today was the easiest day for me to manage in weeks.
The writing here may not be much, but it’s something.
Upcoming Events and Such
Arisia is coming up quickly. I’ve never been to that convention. Come to think of it, I don’t remember visiting Boston before. I probably won’t see very much of it because of the convention, but a visit is a visit. If something stands out that I should check out, maybe we can head to Boston a little earlier in February.
It Started with the Final Convolution
One More for the Road comes out on January 12th, with physical copies available in Boston at Arisia. I will post links and such, and maybe update the picture at the top of my blog around that time, too. It’s a very sweet story, and I really hope people check it out!
The story would not have happened if Melissa and I had not attended the last Convolution. It was it’s 4th year, and the 3rd I attended. It was never huge, but it was something special. It had a lot of potential, and it’s a shame that it died the way it did.
The last Convolution was different than the rest in that it was more workshop oriented. Most of the time when I go to writing conventions, the programming amounts to several rooms occupied by 2 to 5 people behind a table, having a conversation about a topic in front of an audience. The topic is almost always world building in disguise, though sometimes there is some light information on the business of writing.
I might be overgeneralizing a little bit. We’re not here to talk about other conventions. We’re here to talk about the last Convolution.
Most of the programming involved joining a group of people in a room, pulling out pen and paper, and then following instructions to go through some sort of writing exercise. It was excellent! I was fully in my element and really enjoying it.
Melissa, on the other hand, did not like it. Not at first, anyway. She’s nervous about her writing. She doesn’t want to share it. She doesn’t think she can do it. But then as she worked through her fears and produced some words with the rest of us, I think she got to see that she’s got some writing muscles.
She was having fun by the end of the convention. That’s when she had the idea.
“A witch pulled over for a DUI. And she’s wearing a red dress. Why was she pulled over? What’s her story?”
Those were her words. She said them several times, and she asked me to write it. And I kept telling her, “No, that’s your story. You write it!”
On January 12th, you will all have the chance to see the result!