500 Words on Porpoising

500 Words on Porpoising — Blue Ink Alchemy

I've had the privilege of seeing porpoises in motion on whale watches, keeping pace with little tour boats as they make their way into the deeper waters. It's a fascinating sight, seeing sleek gray bodies appear and then disappear beneath rapid waves. They whistle and cackle to one another as they go. It's fun for them. It's fun to watch. It's not so much fun when it's your emotions or mood doing the same thing. The chemicals in the brain of a victim of bipolar disorder are in flux, on a nearly constant basis. Sometimes, in spite of things like medication and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), the moods of the victim will fluctuate with rapidity, ranging from 'okay' down into depression and then up into hypomania with little to no warning, then back down again. This can repeat itself several times, at irregular intervals and with varying degrees of intensity, for hours or even days. In bipolar circles, it is referred to as "rapid cycling". I call it "porpoising". And it makes being productive, positive, or even functional very, very difficult. I've said on multiple occasions that I don't like going into detail about my internal struggles or mental health issues in this particular blogging space. At the same time, I know this is a venue from which some people get updates and entertainment, so a lengthy silence bears some explanation. I'd much rather be honest about the situation than just pop back in like nothing happened. It prevents ambiguity and confusion. I've been working more on my honesty of late, anyway. Omitting key facts from a discussion for fear of hurting feelings or making interactions awkward only makes things worse. Regardless of motivation, fact-omission is, in truth, a lie. And I do not like, condone, or accept lies. I mean, as a novelist and a storyteller, I do lie in that I write about things that never happen involving people who don't exist, but that is different from hiding the truth about a situation or being in denial about my feelings. And my feelings have been all over the place. My days are lacking in structure and my bank accounts are in a constant state of near depletion, whine whine etc. It's difficult to maintain focus without structure or stability, and that difficulty increases when a mood swings or a fear manifests or an old wound gushes. I'm looking ahead, though. Next week is a new week. Steady posts, streams, and plans will be hammered out and adhered to as well as I can. I hope to hear good news about some form of income which will help with the porpoising. The best you can do when something like this happens is learn what you can and put it behind you. Thanks, everyone, for reading. I encourage you to check out my fiction, my streaming, and my other projects. I hope to have a Patreon up soon, if I can focus it right. Don't forget to be awesome today.

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The Flash Fiction Challenge

The Flash Fiction Challenge — Blue Ink Alchemy

Courtesy Floating Robes Since this week Chuck has challenged his writerly readers to come up with Flash Fiction challenges of their own, over here in my own writer-space I thought I'd talk about why flash fiction is, in and of itself, a challenge for writers. Serious authors bang out 1000 words or more a day as they propel themselves towards the completion of their drafts. They bend over keyboards and notepads, tapping or scratching out thousands of words on a daily basis. So why is flash fiction such a challenge? Paradoxically, it's because telling a story is easier with more words than less. While it's certainly true that a saga like Lord of the Rings or A Song of Ice and Fire would be diminished if it were not told with multiple volumes of text, it's just as true that stories of equal poignancy have been told with a tiny fraction of such sagas' word counts. Consider Hemingway's shortest story:

For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.

Other authors have done similar work, turning a mere six words into fully-realized, powerful tales. I make no claims of being a Hemingway, a Whedon, or an Atwood, so I'm much more comfortable trying to tell a story in 1000 words rather than six. Still, it can be a great challenge. You have to show rather than tell in as few words as possible. You must keep the tale simple while ascribing adequate depth. Your characters need to come alive in just a sentence or two. It is an amazing way to keep your writing skills sharp. Writers burn out. It takes a lot of energy to create. As with any work of art, a well-written story costs the author in time and motivation and fatigue. This is especially true if writing is not the primary profession of the author; if time for writing must be carved out around the time occupied by another form of employment or other responsibilities, it can be even more taxing. As strong as the need to write might be, and as much as unfulfilled word counts might haunt the author, there are only so many hours in the day. Flash fiction keeps the wheels greased. It quiets the authorial demons hounding you to get more shit done. Oh, you should still get it done, don't get me wrong. It's just easier to dispense with things like laundry and TPS reports and menial labor when you get just a little writing done. It takes the edge off, while paradoxically sharpening your nibs. And prompts, like those over at Terribleminds, make it even easier to get into the habit of knocking a little flash fiction out on a regular basis. I recommend Chuck and his books and blog for a lot of reasons: the brilliance, the profanity, the fearlessness, the strength of character, the clarity of voice, the beard. But let me add one more reason: most Fridays, he issues his Flash Fiction challenge. If you're inclined to write, I highly recommend trying your hand at meeting one of those challenges. Your writing will improve. You'll tell interesting stories. And you'll feel accomplished, as well as in good company when you read other entries. Give it a try. I highly doubt you'll be disappointed in what happens.

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Blue Ink Alchemy

Characters And Choices

Characters And Choices — Blue Ink Alchemy

There are times when the simple route is an appealing one. Our protagonist characters make good decisions, and good things happen. We project ourselves into the lives of our heroes, orienting ourselves towards making brave, clear-cut decisions that yield beneficial results for everyone involved. It keeps the narrative straightforward and our protagonists squeaky clean. If you've spent any amount of time in the real world, you know things are never that simple. I've been thinking a lot about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which if you haven't seen, you should do yourself a favor and find to watch. There are no big bad villains to face, no world-ending threats, not even anything I'd call massively contrived, save for the science at the heart of the conflict. Still, you can overlook the contrivance because of the film's focus on its characters, the choices they make, and the regrets that emerge as a result of those choices. People face hard choices every day. Decisions need to be made in the name of survival, protecting those most precious, and preserving one's self in the face of negative emotions, aberrant thoughts, or unwanted influences. People wrestle with their own demons in an invisible war that only manifests in their choices, and in the casualties left behind, in broken hearts and scarred souls. Not everybody comes out unscathed. Sometimes, nobody wins at all. Your characters should not be any different. The best characters, the one that truly engage with an audience, are identifiable as people, rather than ciphers or caricatures. And people make hard choices. People make mistakes. People pursue lines of flawed logic. And people can be corrected, adjust their courses, and try to make better choices in the future. It can be painful. It can be costly. It can haunt people. The more you show this, the better your story will be. Your characters don't have to be perfect. Their choices don't have to be perfect, either. It isn't just slaying monsters or saving worlds that make our characters great; sometimes, overcoming one's own obstacles and insecurities is more heroic than any of those great deeds. Let your characters confess their weaknesses. Let your characters accept responsibility for transgressions. And let your characters forgive those they care about who've wronged them. It will make the audience think, nod, cheer, and maybe even find a piece of themselves within the narrative that they can take home. They're your characters. The choice is yours.

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Blue Ink Alchemy

Hearthstone For Beginners

Hearthstone For Beginners — Blue Ink Alchemy

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft has been my go-to CCG for some time, now. I've coached by pros, and I have blatantly netdecked to gain ranks in the ladder. While I continue to chase the dream of achieving Legendary rank and possibly participating in tournaments, I'm happy to say that I've learned a great deal about playing competitive games in general and Hearthstone in particular. Hopefully, these tips will be helpful if you want to get into the game, play at a higher level, or just have more fun. By the way, most of these tips apply to Constructed play; I'm not a very good Arena player. I need a lot more practice, there.

Casual Mode Is Your Friend

If you're aiming towards the higher rungs of the ladder, you may think that you should be playing Ranked mode as much as possible, all day, every day. However, I have found that this is not the case, nor should it be. A great deal can be learned from Casual, as well. Since it's more of a melting pot, you'll be up against all sorts of opponents, all sorts of decks, and it's harder to predict what your opponent is going to do next. You learn to anticipate the unexpected, trust your own decks, and take failure a bit less seriously. And it's a great place to try new decks. Speaking of which...

Don't Be Afraid To Try New Decks

I'm guilty of having favorites. Paladin is probably my favorite class in Hearthstone, even though my corresponding character in World of Warcraft isn't max level. My highest character in Azeroth is a Hunter, but Hunter tends to frustrate me in Hearthstone since so few Hunters play anything but decks that aim to beat face as quickly as possible. Anyway, my point is that even if you have a favorite class and a deck whose concepts you love (for example, my Rofladin deck that uses [Hobgoblin] and a bunch of adorable little minions), you shouldn't be afraid to try out a deck in another class, even if it's a class you don't necessarily like for whatever reason. With the mutable nature of the meta-game, in terms of what decks are more efficient at producing wins, not to mention new cards you might earn from packs or solo adventures, it's almost always a good idea to try something new. Take it into Casual and see what happens!

There's No Shame In Netdecking

Especially when it comes to clamboring up that ladder, I would refer to the post I linked above when it comes to looking up decklists online. Inspiration and experimentation make for some very interesting and fun decks, to be certain, but if you're looking to get yourself ahead, it's good to remember that folks have been there before. My experience with using online resources for new, meta-friendly decks in Hearthstone has universally been a good one. HearthPwn user Sigma put together a fantastic Warlock deck that I love to play, but control decks can be hard to manage at lower ranks when everybody's playing Face Hunters. Thankfully, Sigma also made The Angry Chicken is pretty much the go-to podcast about the game. The hosts are agreeable and knowledgeable, the information is up-to-date, the debates are intriguing, and the transitional audio cues are fantastic. I love tuning into that podcast. I think you will, too, if you're into Hearthstone at all. Sean "Day[9]" Plott has long taught people to be better gamers, with his exemplary attitude and informative commentary. He tells great stories, has a bunch of experience commentating and streaming games, and did I mention he's a great Hearthstone player? You should absolutely tune into his stream, or catch up on his YouTube channel. Hafu is another great Hearthstone streamer. She plays more Arena than Constructed, but her attitude is great and I love seeing more represtnation among gamers. I plan on tuning into her stream more often, and subscribing once I can afford to do so! That's about all I can think of in terms of getting the most out of your Hearthstone experience. If you want to see me playing the game, talking about how I play and (hopefully) applying all of the above, you can do so over on Twitch. I hope to see you there!

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Blue Ink Alchemy

On Net Decks and Feet in Mouths

On Net Decks and Feet in Mouths — Blue Ink Alchemy

Art by Wayne Reynolds Remember the old advice "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything?" Every once in a while I speak without thinking. It's been known to happen. My emotionality has been a problem many times in my past, and while I have a much better grip on things now, I still occasionally slip up and say what I'm feeling rather than thinking it through. Sometimes I think I'm being clever. Sometimes I just want to express myself. But when it happens, and I look back on what was said, I realize I was a bit of an ass. Case in point: I uttered the following words at my friendly local gaming store during the last rotation. "If you run a decklist from some top player on the Internet, nothing personal, but I hate you." For a bit of background on why this is the wrong way to approach competitive gameplay in general and Magic in particular, you should be familiar with Timmy, Johnny, and Spike. Here's an article on these guys and what they mean to the average Magic player. When you get down to it, not everybody is going to fall entirely into a single category or type, nor is it reasonable to assume other players will play the game you play it. When it comes to Magic, I'm a bit of a Johnny/Spike. That doesn't mean Timmy players are wrong, nor are those who go fully Spike and are just in it to win it. Neither I nor any other person has the right to tell other people how to play their games. Provided you're not being a jerk, cheating, or otherwise making the game deliberately unpleasant for other people, play the game however you want to play it. Some players just want big, splashy things to happen or to pull off an impossible combo. Others are interested in building their decks in new and interesting ways just to see how they play. And still others just want the glory of victory. All of these are fine, and none are invalid. For me or anybody else to say otherwise is just ludicrous. It's probably part of getting older. When I first started playing Magic almost twenty years ago, there was no Internet to speak of. Folks had to take what cards they had and build what they could. When Scrye magazine or The Duelist arrived with some decklists and advice, such articles could be cited by aspiring professionals and enthusiasts of the game. How are "net decks" any different? In hindsight and examination, I can tell you they really aren't. All that said, all I can do is apologize for speaking as I did and hope I didn't outright offend anyone in doing so. The only basis by which anybody can truly come down on how you play the game is if you're making everybody around you miserable while playing for reasons outside of normal frustrating from losing. Basically, as long as you're obeying Wheaton's First Law, you should be fine.

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Into The Stream

Into The Stream — Blue Ink Alchemy

I don't do a lot of stream-of-consciousness things on this blog. Most of the time, if I have to vent about a mental or emotional boondoggle, I use Tumblr or Pastebin. But today finds me posting later than I'd like, with no subjects I'm comfortable or confident in providing to you, so here's me doing a stream-of-consciousness brain-dump in the hopes that it will inform, inspire, or at least entertain someone who reads this. I don't like filler content very much. Filler arcs in anime rarely do anything for me. They can be fun, for certain - I think the Android portion of DragonBall Z before Cell shows up is technically filler, but the three cyborgs on a road trip is still a fun time. It's actually one of the problems I had with the TV adaptation of Game of Thrones - a couple of story points felt more like filler than anything, And then there's all of the other issues that have emerged there. While writing this I got a call from a source of work that is also a source of stress. Such things tend to disrupt my stream of consciousness in a very arresting and frustrating way. This is an internal process that doesn't work as smoothly or easily as I'd like. I try very hard to not let my mental and emotional difficulties spill out into my professional interactions, or even my capacity to listen to and assist people I care about. But that's getting into some of that Tumblr/Pastebin territory I discussed. I'm hopeful for the future, but trepidatious for it as well.

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Blue Ink Alchemy

Flash Fiction: You Are Dead

Flash Fiction: You Are Dead — Blue Ink Alchemy

On Friday, Chuck Wendig said the only thing we need for this Flash Fiction Challenge is a dead body. "Okay," I said to myself, "let's pretend that we're dead."

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Is it still called waking up when you were not asleep, but dead? It's one of the questions you struggle with every time you return to consciousness. You are, at least, spared anything resembling a nightmare or even an idle thought while you are in repose; you know for a fact that your brain shuts down completely every time the sun rises. Now that it's set, you are mobile again. Until that moment when twilight ended and night actually began, anybody finding you would have mistaken you for just another dead body. It's cold. The air conditioning unit up in one of the basement windows is kept on full blast during the day so your body's falling temperature doesn't stop for hours. That holds off the worst of the rigor mortis, so that when you... wake up? ... your body can actually move. Stiffly. You take a moment to sit up slowly, flex your fingers painfully, get your blood circulating again. The burning in your chest begins very soon after. You look down at the little round hole in your sternum. Every once in a while, you move in such a way that you feel a stabbing pain in the left side of your chest, deep within your ribcage. The bullet - it's still there, still lodged somewhere in the wall of your heart. No blood comes from the wound, which is closed over. It's not clotted, the way wounds usually are; there's just this translucent, milky film over the hole, slightly sticky to the touch. You get a chill down your spine whenever you touch it. You avoid touching it. Once you're moving more like a human and less like something from the imagination of George Romero or Robert Kirkland, you put on some clothes and a hooded sweatshirt. Your hands find their way into the sweatshirt's pockets as you head up the stairs and out of the cellar door. The landlord upstairs only knows that you leave at night and return in the morning, and so far, has asked few questions. You haven't considered getting a job for two reasons. One, night falls and morning comes at inconsistent times, and you don't want to be dropping dead in the middle of a shift, or the commute home. More importantly, though, you need to find your killer. It was the first thing you thought of the first time you regained consciousness in the morgue. The smell of gunsmoke, wide eyes in the darkness, and a burning sense of indignant rage that your life was so callously ended. You need to remember more. Everything other than that searing moment before things went completely black is a haze. The faces of some friends and family linger in your mind, and you struggle to reconnect with anything resembling a coherent memory. It's why you walk away from where you were killed and towards another house not far from your own. You know it's a bad idea. You know you can't be seen. You know it's going to end badly. But your feet move in that direction anyway, muscle memory in control, your legs knowing the way even if your brain is telling you that you need to be elsewhere. Finding your killer. Earning your rest. You stop across the street, between two houses, covered in shadow. You look up at the porch. You see them there, the lights of their cigarettes bobbing, the soft sound of beer cans moving, the occasional soft laugh. It's an uneasy sound, a sound of recovery. They're hurting, over there. Someone is, at least. You narrow your eyes, trying to make out more than shadows. And then - Sitting on the porch with your friends, you laugh heartily at a joke and lift your glass. Another rim touches yours. You both drink. This is familiar, comfortable, and safe. No expectations. No awkwardness. No hidden agendas or concealed emotions. Honesty. Trust. Love. Friends. Smiles that light up rooms and make other people curious, if not downright envious. Your heart clenches. The bullet is a burning coal in your ribcage. You exhale, a name pushing its way out of your dried, cracked throat past blackening teeth. You hear a can drop. The lights of the cigarettes stop moving. Panic shoots through your body. You turn and you run. The dead have no place among the living. Still, you make your way back downtown. Into the lights and seething populace of the urban center. You once again walk by where it happened. You hear the gunshot again, a phantom sound in the back of your mind. You scan the ground for clues. You've been here often enough to doubt you'll find anything. But that garbage can wasn't where it has been before. Someone moved it, probably to carry it to the curb. Under where it was is a small rectangle, and you bend to look - The business card's your only lead. Phone inquiries and talking with others in safe environments only goes so far. You need to go to the source to get your answers. Card in hand you head for the address when you get stopped by someone who knows what you've been doing, the questions you've been asking. You don't see the gun before it's too late... You stagger. Your hand reaches out of the wall nearby. You can't take your eyes off of the business card. You bend, knees creaking, and pick it up. Turning, you see people staring at you. Flashing lights in the distance. And in the sky, stars disappearing as dawn looms. How long were you standing there? You break into a run. You head for the only haven you have. You clutch the card tightly, the grip of the dead. You throw open the cellar door with strength that surprises you, nearly ripping it from its hinges. You pull off your clothes, lest they start to stink, and climb onto your slab. You still hold the card. You want to cry. Dawn arrives. You are dead.

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Today's photo courtesy moocat.

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Blue Ink Alchemy