SFMurphy's Primary Front on the Net
I taught because I had to teach but if I had been a mere student, I would have stayed in today. It is that damned cold and unpleasant.
Thus I declare this day to be a Fuck It Day.
Actual work to resume tomorrow.
Maybe.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
The Student Front: Online Learning
I’m taking two classes online this semester. Terri’s Creative Writing, which is an ongoing thing designed to keep my writing career from sinking completely into oblivion, and First Aid/CPR. Terri’s class consists mainly of exercises, writing and crit work. The points system forces me to keep up and not blow off the work like I did last semester.
The First Aid class on the other hand is stuffed full of quizes. Nominally I’m a good quiz/test taker in the traditional classroom environment. This has not been the case with this class, which is a bit too much like Army Correspondence Courses I signed up for years ago. During the first few weeks of the semester I missed quizes and performed poorly due to the lack of a textbook. Now I have the textbook and my performance is not much better. Right now I’d be lucky to average a C in the course.
What is going on? If I had to guess, part of it is that I am not applying myself. That is easy enough to diagnose.
The other part? Frankly, I hate learning material online. The more I do this the more I dislike it. I’m basically teaching myself. If I knew the material then I’d take a challenge test and test out of the material.
I also suspect that I read onscreen material differently than material which is sitting in my hot little hands via wood pulp. My eyes very much skitter across the screen much the way water skitters across a hot skillet. I think this is why I used to get into so much trouble during net arguments. I think this is partly why I have trouble processing my e-mail sometimes. Ironic given that I blog, but I mainly punch these entries in. I am not a great consumer of blogs for the most part.
I will have to adapt and overcome, whatever the problem is.
In Terri’s class I caught up most of my work, clearing the practice crits and punching in the character template. Here before too long we’ll start workshop. I’ll have to stay on my toes to get my workshop credit in early.
The Teaching Front
We are moving through the Second Industrial Revolution today. I focus on Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller though there are plenty of people to focus on. We might finish the material earlier than I had planned, which is annoying given that I have set the test date already. Still, it should all work out.
Tonight I’m finishing the French-Indian War for the night class and moving into the Pre-Revolutionary Era.
Fitness
Got a weight training session in today. Given the press of work I had to take care of, I skipped cardio today. I’ll do it tomorrow in Body Building, honest.
Body fat still around 23.5% which suits me just fine.
Other Fronts
The weather is cold and nasty. The roads are slick and the drivers are driving like idiots. Trinity got tags for her car which cleared that problem off the deck just in time.
I sent off some initial material for RPN – 05 and received a possible tip on a writing opportunity(tip of the beanie if you are reading). I’m thinking about that opportunity in between working on this other stuff.
So it goes.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
The Table is Set
The Spoon does indeed stand
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
The Writing Front
Short Story Challenge-Final Update
The challenge officially ends on the 10th of this month but I’m effectively done. I will need to focus on my school work, teaching and RPN-05 this week which will leave little time for additional writing.
A Knitter’s Day seems to be the stronger of the two stories. The first draft seems clearer than many fourth or fifth draft projects to me. There is still maybe 1400 words of room to flesh out and to be honest, I think it needs heavy polishing and refinement. Still, it feels pretty solid to me.
A Bicycle for Kyle is a strong project as well but it has a problem. In fact it is the same problem which did in The Tinkerin’ Woman from last semester.
I have a child, about eight years old, who doesn’t sound like a child. The child isn’t behaving properly or realistically. This is one benefit to having Trinity’s grandkids visit ever so often. I can watch Monkeytoes (a six year old boy) and see where I am going right and where I am going wrong.
So I’ve got some work to do here. Also, the “Big Change” is missing.
In a week or so I’ll polish these up a bit more. They’ll go through Terri’s Creative Writing class for critiques from the students. If I get two or three solid crits then it will be money well spent. In the meantime, I have a Beta Reader or two who will help out.
So it goes.
Again, a big thanks to Rachel Swirsky for constantly dropping by. I opted out of the e-mail list mainly because I thought my presence would cause more harm than good. She was good enough to come and see how it was going.
Speaking of Science Fiction Careers
Last night after I completed some initial work for the Client on RPN-05, I did some google searching of yours truly. Depending on what I put into google, I get my stories along with the reviews or I get the remnants of nearly three years of internet warfare.
I read over some of those old fights last night. There was a particularly nasty one at Asimov’s back in the summer of 2008 pertaining to my attitude about what you can and can’t write as a science fiction writer. I vented my spleen consistently for a number of posts, pretty much to the dismay of many Asimov’s Forum regulars.
There have been other fights of course. The various Fail fights, I was directly involved in early variants of them.
Then of course, there have been plenty of posts where I vented my fury at the current editor of Asimov’s concerning the goat screw of a runaround I got concerning Maternal Soldier.
I guess I have enough distance to read those posts without getting really angry. Or in the case of the Maternal Soldier goat fuck, no more angry than I have been.
That said, I didn’t feel a stitch of remorse. Not an ounce of shame. Not even a little bit of sorrow. In examining those posts I saw the same consistent theme. I was honest about my opinion, my feelings and I was upfront about my anger. That behavior cost me, to be certain. I am sure my name is on a blacklist at certain publications but then again, I was pretty certain my name was on that list anyway for my politics.
I’m systematically barred from Asimov’s, I suspect because I said repeatedly that the current editor could best serve science fiction by stepping in front of a speeding bus. My feeling hasn’t changed on that score either. Nor does it change my attitude about the quality of what the magazine is publishing (getting worse each issue, everytime I pick one up I quickly put it back down as unreadable).
The smart thing, perhaps, would have been to refrain from hammering away at the keyboard at those forums. Maybe even better would be to lie through my teeth about my concerns, feelings, perhaps sign my ventings with a solid screen name like many in the Fail Fandom Community do.
I didn’t do the smart thing. Perhaps my career has suffered as a result. Or perhaps just as likely, my career suffered more due to the fact that I was incredibly busy during the first three years of my teaching career trying to make sure that it wasn’t a flash in the pan.
The plan now, of course, is to restart my career. My options are pretty tight, given what I prefer to write, the nature of the market, in terms of politics and economics.
I’m a writer. What else can I do but strive? My lack of repentance or contrition will not endear me to some. Some will remember my actions and always hold it against me. I accept that since I live by the same sword.
I do know this.
The time for such internet firefights has passed. I simply do not have the time for it and I think I’ve finally come to the conclusion recently that they are truly pointless.
So it goes.
Murphy’s Standing Spoon Only Chilli
Trinity wanted chilli. She kept trying to get me to make it with turkey meat.
Heresy! No way!
So I finally get to make it my way. Flickr and Border’s Wifi aren’t playing well together but here is a shot of the work in progress.
Trinity was a bit iffy when I told her to pour the beans in (four cans) after draining the juice off (don’t want anything to get between the meat and the beans). However, once she dug out a couple of scoops and mixed it with sour cream, she pronounced it divine.
It was good to cook up a pot of this stuff again. I’ve not made this in nearly two years.
So it goes.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
A year ago, at the request of John Birmingham, Trinity and I made the journey to New York City. He was on his tour of the US for the release of Without Warning and he wanted us to be there. It was an opportunity meet a friend I knew only from the internet and travel.
Granted, New York City was not at the top of my list. My head was filled with the standard Midwestern attitudes about the city, reinforced by much of what I encountered in the online SF communities. However, Trinity and I found, to our pleasant surprise, that New York City was a very friendly, safe and enjoyable place.
There were rocky moments during the trip. Part of that had to do with slippage in the tub in the room which banged Trinity up pretty badly. Part of it had to do with some relationship based issues which were threatening to torque the relationship apart. When I wrote a year ago the line, “here be dragons,” I wasn’t kidding. Having a sinus infection that threatened to blow my head apart didn’t help either. My temper was short, my ability to hear was degraded and my ability to think was next to nil.
And yet it turned out well enough. Birmo and many of the Burgers met for dinner Friday night, Mexican oddly enough. He met with us for breakfast at Ellen’s Stardust Diner where a blonde singer landed on my lap (I had forgotten about that until Trinity reminded me). Apparently Trinity and Birmo had looked on with great relish as I tried to wish myself somewhere else.
NYC Comicon was the main feature of the business side of things. Here is a YouTube clip.
Yeah, about two minutes is all I can handle. I’m not a convention person. Not ever going to be. I’m not a crowd person either. Birmo, CraigWA and myself deployed down there for one of the panels. However Trinity’s wounded status required my attention back at the hotel. I also had some patching up work to do.
One part of the trip will manifest itself here in the next few months. I can’t spoil anything but I was there first hand for some research walks around NYC. Some of what we saw does end up on the page. There was a number of pictures taken and frankly, it helps to have feet on the ground when you work on a scene.
Sunday morning featured a breakfast at Junior’s on 45th and Broadway. The night before Trinity and I enjoyed a first class dinner at Maxine’s. We had to eat out because the Flatotel apparently didn’t believe in weekend room service, which makes me wonder if they are still in business. I’d be surprised if they are.
Junior’s was pretty classy, solid food, reasonable prices, good service. Birmo joined us just before our breakfast arrived and we had a pretty good morning. Later that afternoon we linked up again for Carnegie Deli and a walk about Manhattan.
I’ve already written about my impressions of Birmo. Tall, graceful, seemed to glide across the floor. Incredibly observant of his surroundings. One would think he had been a soldier at one point or another if they didn’t know better. Perhaps, given his journalistic experiences, he had a similiar kind of seasoning. Ironically, Trinity spent more time talking to him than perhaps I did, mainly because I simply couldn’t hear or breathe.
And to be honest, Trinity has a knack for talking to people in general. If it had just been Birmo and me I doubt I would have learned as much about him (this isn’t the place for me to divulge anything). I tend to be an “all about business” type so it would have been questions about the book, questions about writing, questions about everything but the rest of Birmo’s life.
Trinity’s presence there helped out a great deal I think. I was able to sit back and take in what I could hear. What I missed I could pick up later over the following months.
It was a great experience and it ended perhaps a bit too soon. Birmo would be in NYC for another week before moving on. This at a time when the wildfires were tearing up his home country. The distance I’m sure made the tragedy that much more painful.
As for Trinity and I? Well, we’re still together. Some days are great, other days not so much. Sometimes I wonder how I got so lucky, other times I wonder what went wrong. I suspect it is the same for Trinity as well.
New York, I think, made us.
Now we’ll see if we’ll endure and perhaps, meet with our newfound friends again in the Big Apple someday.
Thanks, Birmo. When next you come to the States, we’ll have to hoist one together.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
The Writing Front: Student Mode
In Terri’s Creative Writing we’ve reached Task 10, which is to rewrite the opening paragraph of a famous novel in different points of view. I chose Eric Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front for my assignment. Everytime I sit down with the novel I find that I am drawn very quickly into a world that is very familiar to me.
In any case, here is what I wrote.
All Quiet on the Western Front: Third Person
Paul Baumer had finally found a bit of safety after fourteen days on the line. Relieved the day before by a company of fresh fish, the remnants of the Second Company made their way back to the rear. His belly was full of beef and haricot beans. With a full mess-tin for the evening came an additional double ration of sausage and bread. Baumer thought that put a man in fine trim and was grateful for the manifestation of such good fortune. Watching the carroty headed cook hold forth with his ladle, great dollops of stew end up in the mess-tins. The cook is making a heroic effort to empty the stewpot in time for coffee but Baumer isn’t sure how he will pull that off. A couple of Baumer’s comrades, Tjaden and Muller, have produced two washbasins and had them filled up as a reverse. Baumer knows that for Tjaden this is voracity whereas for Muller this is foresight. Baumer wondered where Tjaden put it all for he was as thin as a beanpole and always would be.
All Quiet on the Western Front: Second Person
You resting five miles behind the front. The day before you were relieved and now your belly is full of beef and haricot beans. The remnants of the Second Company are satisfied and at peace. Everyone has another mess-tin full for the evening as well as a double ration of sausage and bread. This puts you in fine trim and you wonder how you came to have such good fortune. Sitting at ease, you watch the carroty headed cook beg everyone to eat the rest of the stew in time to make coffee. Your comrades, Tjaden and Muller, have produced two washbasins and had them filled up as a reverse. Baumer knows that for Tjaden this is voracity whereas for Muller this is foresight. You always wondered where Tjaden put it all for he was as thin as a beanpole and always would be.
I’m not a fan of second person myself. I prefer either first or third person limited.
The Teaching Front
We’ve got tests incoming or upcoming depending on your point of view. I went to talk about the Transcontinental Railroad today and mightily bored most of my students were. I’ve got some sharp students in there but most of them are asleep at the switch.
It’ll end in tears I suspect.
The Fitness Front
I’m down to 200 pounds as of this week. I only made the gym three times this week. Next week I’ll try to do four to five times a week.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
Fought a war.
Won a war.
Talked about the consequences of a war.
Built an empire.
Dealt with a Rebellion.
Next time on Murphy’s History of the United States, we’ll tear down an empire with the cry, “Give me Liberty or give me death!”
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
The Writing Front
Actually, I am not at my desk at the Pod. We do not have internet there (for a lot of reasons, cost being one of them, my sanity being another). That said, I am at a table making some progress.
First, I printed off the drafts of A Bicycle for Kyle and A Knitter’s Day for a hard copy review. I just can’t edit copy on a screen. I need to be able to mark all over it, which feels more organic than pecking at keys.
I think both of these projects have potential, far more so than the previous aborted endeavors over the last two years. They’ve got a saleable feel to them, which some of my detractors scoff at but I sense that with the right tweaking, these two might be winners.
They are incomplete, insofar as parts of the middle are missing. For whatever reason, I have the most trouble with middles. Beginnings are easy. Endings take a bit more effort but not much. For instance, I always knew how Tearing Down Tuesday would end. At some point, someone was going to drop Tuesday’s brain out the window of an airship into the Missouri River. Granted that at one point this someone was a girl and not a boy and the context was a bit different, but the ending never, ever changed. It was always going to be about setting Tuesday free.
The still unsold Maternal Soldier has the same ending. No matter how I write it, the protag always remains in the Army. I suspect, at the end of the day, this is why this story doesn’t sell. Given what happens in the story, no one who has never been a soldier can understand why I made the choice I did.
In fact, I suspect the writing effort would go faster if I simply wrote beginnings and endings, set the project aside for a bit and returned to stuff the filling in.
I also read A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift, which has inspired some thoughts on how to approach the stalled out Free Range Humans. Tip of the beanie to Terri Lowry for that suggestion.
I doubt that I will start a fourth story for the Swirsky Short Story Challenge (she didn’t originate this challenge but she does come and check in on me so I’ll name it after her). However, I do have two stories which can be brought to completion soon and a third which has potential.
That is far more than I accomplished over the last two years.
If things work out I will submit these projects to Terri’s class for peer review. In the meantime, I’ve got a recruit for the Newly Reformed E-Lite Reader Corps. I may stick to just a very small chosen few for now.
So it goes.
Research Project Number – 05
I started an outline for the Client covering their requests today. One thing on the To Do List is to build a government and a governing administration for the project. This meant going back and taking a look at historical models. I also have to decide whether or not I think using the existing constitution is a good idea. I’m leaning towards shit canning it myself (not the US Constitution, something else).
I’m also working on some modeling for a central character. For this effort, I am looking at these examples from American History.
Thomas Jefferson
Alexander Hamilton
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Johnson
And I’m sure I’ll look at some other folks from outside of US History.
When I get this outline polished up, I’ll send it along to the Client.
The Teaching Front
We are exploiting the Great Plains today. I had a snoozing student, which usually doesn’t bother me but he was sleeping soundly enough that I could hear his breathing while I lectured. Not too far from snoring so I had one of his fellow students tap his desk.
It is nuts and bolts stuff, the Homestead Act, talking about mining, cattle drives, and the like. I also mentioned David Halladay, Joseph Glidden and Pale Rider with Clint Eastwood.
And since the Transcontinental Railroad is coming up, I got a rare shot at the Obama Administration’s decision to kill human space flight in the United States.
It is a stupid, short sighted decision on his part. I almost never, ever go there with my lectures but it dovetailed nicely into the reasoning for the Transcon in the first place.
Other Fronts
Trinity gets paid today so I predict errands to do this evening. It is her last paycheck after losing that bookstore job at UMKC (which I am not happy about). We’re another source of revenue comes in to pay the tags on her new car.
In any case, it means I’m carrying the load again, no thanks to that damned book store.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
The Writing Front
I had a bit of a depression about the writing markets yesterday coupled with the incredibly stupid decision by the current regime here in my country to murder the human spaceflight program at NASA.
So, I can do one of three things.
One, I can go look for a fight on the internet. That is what I used to do when I’d get like this. Surely there is some disaster in progress that needs addressing.
Two, I can go to the gym and work off my frustrations. That said, I have been to the gym twice this week and for the first time in a while, I’ve been able to pull the belt in another notch.
Three, I can take the rough drafts of two stories, go somewhere quiet where no one will find me and work on them.
The first isn’t a viable option anymore, for a lot of reasons, mainly because there is no sense in arguing with politically correct trolls. Everyone already knows what I think about science fiction stories which are more interested in editorializing than telling a story.
So I think I shall go forth and get some writing done. I’ll figure out which market to send them to later.
Maybe this amazon/kindle/whatever nonsense will blow over and the situation will right itself. Given the problems I am having at my end of the food chain, I should be concerned but I just can’t quite get there.
Especially since, well, I hate e-readers anyway.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
The Teaching Front
All three of my American History 120s are moving through the French-Indian War this week. I suppose if they had a different instructor then the students would pass it without much notice. The Big Mac of the 1700s is the Revolutionary War, doesn’t Mister Murphy know that?
The French-Indian War could be called the First Global War. By time it was all said and done it would span the entire globe, depriving the French of their colonial possessions in India and their holdings in North America. The outcome of this war would pretty much seal the fate of the Native American populations on the North American landmass. The war would also unleash a great deal of resentment between the Colonials and the British.
So I spend time talking about it. It is the war which gave Washington his first taste of life on campaign.
I suppose I could have spent more time talking about the Puritan work ethic or the Great Awakening. Some I’m sure would have preferred that I talk about the Salem Witch Trials (oh sweet death take me).
A little bit of info. The key to North America, both in the French-Indian War and later the American Civil War, will be the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Whoever controls those rivers will control the future of the continent. The Ohio perhaps less so in the Civil War, but it is still important as well.
When the war is over we will move into the Pre-Revolutionary Era. After that, it will be test time. The test is either twenty years away or two weeks. Your mileage may vary.
Research Project Number – 05
I’ve started putting some time into this effort. Right now it is light work, laying down the organization of a political entity.
Of course, there is more to it than that but I can’t release info on the net about the project.
Other Fronts
Later today I’ll run dinner down to Trinity at UMKC. She has stats tonight. Once that is cleared I’ll try to get a developing disaster under control in a First Aid class I signed up for. I don’t have a textbook, the course is online, and you have to take so many quizes (something I HATE doing because it is small potatoes type work designed to generate points for those that can’t hack tests). It isn’t really in Instructor’s choice per se. The college has a groupmind that oversees the creation of these courses which requires them to abide by the Quality Matters Best Practices rubric.
I virulently disagree with the rubric because it takes a class and makes it too much like high school. I’m also not hot on the online learning model. It works for Terri’s Creative Writing but frankly it sucks for anything else.
Additionally, I’m going to try and get some more writing done.
So it goes.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
Those that done said stuff