Sean D. Francis

Vote for the Net

Posted on 18 January 2012 | No responses

Resolved: 2012 The Year of Yes

Posted on 3 January 2012 | Comments Off

We are warned by countless people not to make New Year’s Resolutions because they are doomed to fail, or telling us that if we want to make a change in our life, don’t wait for arbitrary dates to make the change. Yet, there is something about having a brand new calendar year that begs for things like resolutions.  We are a people of frontiers, of unconquered lands on which we can start fresh, leave behind the people we were and become something new and better.  A clean calendar is a frontier, a clean future in which we aren’t beholden to the past.

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Don’t Tell Me What You Are Thankful For

Posted on 24 November 2011 | 2 responses

I know the traditional blog post on Thanksgiving is to write about the things for which I am thankful.  Health, family, friends… it really is all the same, isn’t it.  Nothing new to be thankful.  Okay once in a while someone might write about being thankful for metaphysical things, or specific events in his life – thankful for relationships, jobs, and that sort of stuff. Read more

Commentary – Raiders of the Seven Seas

Posted on 20 November 2011 | Comments Off

My First Good Beer

Posted on 15 November 2011 | 1 response

As I lift pen to paper and jot down my thoughts, to my right is a glass filled with a complex Belgian-style golden ale brewed by the Grand Teton brewery in Idaho.  I’m a child of the Rocky Mountains, so I can’t help but gravitate to those things crafted in that region.  A few days ago, I had an opportunity to try Grand Teton’s Imperial Stout and found it to be fantastic.

The Belgian-style golden ale I wet my lips with tonight is the Grand Teton seasonal ale called Coming Home 2011 and I bought it because of the beauty of the bottle and the positive experience I had with their Imperial Stout. I’m very glad I did.  Drinking this beer created a bit of nostalgia in me Read more

Why I’m Not Writing in NaNoWriMo

Posted on 10 November 2011 | Comments Off

The chill winds of October remind me that November approaches and with November comes the promise of National Novel Writing Month.  I used to love National Novel Writing Month.  The challenge, the discipline did me good.  The impetus of just writing, write even if you don’t know what to write, just keep the fingers flying on the keyboard compelled me.

I’ve attempted NaNoWriMo several times and only succeeded once.  I have friends and acquaintences who continue to participate and succeed on a regular basis.

As much as I appreciate the discipline and challenge of NaNoWriMo, I have a fundamental problem with the structure of NaNoWriMo.  The one time Iw succeeded, I spewed such drivel upon the page in the final days, that the last 5,000 words were useless to me. The whole novel begs for a rewrite of an epic proportion.  When it comes to wrtiting, I’m a plotter. I need spreadsheets, index cards, maps, and research to be comfortable with what I’m writing. I’m the kind of writer who first needs to build a world and then populate it with stories.

Yet, that produces very dull stories. At least when I do it. My imagination is clean. I don’t mean that in terms of being naughty or nice, but in terms of who I imagine worlds.  My initial constructs of my fictional worlds are very much like Asimov’s worlds, or Heinlein’s. There is a minimalism and a cleanliness… or at least the absence of the grime and grit that actually make worlds interesting.

This is actually one of the things I really love about Joss Whedon’s works. He takes the standard tropes and then muddies the waters. A lot. As much as possible. It takes a lot of effort for me to muddy the waters. I like things to be easy. Easy, in stories, is boring.

In this vein, obviously, I should thrive under NaNoWriMo, forced to create on the fly is the best way to create the grime that makes a story interesting.

What I write under that pressure does create some fascinating cracks in pristine structure for the interesting quirkiness to come through, but I’m frustrated by it.

So I’m not writing in NaNo. But I still wish I was.

To my friends who take up the challenge year after year, I see you in the same category as my friends who run marathons as I run 5Ks. I’m jealous and awed.

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