Category: Writing

Trying to be a Giant

Did you ever notice how the Jolly Green Giant says “ho, ho, ho” kind of the way Santa Claus does? Could this be in error, or are they related? Maybe they’re the same guy. I mean, you never see them together…

Santa Claus is kind of a giant at Christmastime – not in the Fee Fie Foe Fum way, but, you know, what with his mug on cards, in stores, standing outside houses, sitting in the mall dealing with squirmy little kids that really don’t want to be there, he kind of owns the retail end of the holidays. 

Yeah, Santa Claus is a giant. 

I’ve been thinking about that. About being a giant.

You and I are writers, right? We have our different styles, our different preferred genres, but, at the end of the day, we both put words on a page, or into a document. It’s what we do, right?

So, I have a secret mantra. When I get scared or stressed out, I have this set of seven platitudes that calms me down. 

It’s calming because of the words, of course, but also because it takes so dang long to get through all seven.

Next time you have to go wee and you just can’t possibly hold it in for another second, count backwards from 5 before you go. It sounds loony, but you’ll be surprised that you can do it. You absolutely just have to go this very second…5, 4, 3, 2, 1… and now go. How is it possible that you can hold it long enough to do the countdown?

It’s mind over matter. You give your brain a little puzzle – it’s super easy to count up, but counting down takes a little thinking – and your brain stops focusing on going wee while it solves the puzzle.

I think that’s how this long mantra works. Here it is:

Be of good cheer. Keep working. Keep an open mind. Keep an open heart. Have faith. Have confidence. And don’t forget who you are. 

Self-explanatory, yes? As time progresses, we’ll go into each of these with a finer-tooth comb, but you get the gist, right?

Have faith -I’m not a religious guy, so my faith is that the universe is not evil (neither is it benevolent), so dark forces are not working against me. That’s dumb, I know, but it’s where I live.

Have confidence – that’s about your work. Have confidence in your work, because it’s what you do.

Even if I’m not a spectacularly good writer, and I’m truly not, I can still take confidence that my writing is done to the best of my ability. I’m confident that I’ve done my best.

We can always learn to write better. You can know for certain that even Hemingway flipped his sentences around to find better ways of saying things. It’s just what we do.

So, here’s my question: was Hemingway a giant? Of course he was – we don’t even use his first name. Just like saying Santa, the world knows who we are talking about, right?

Why am I, then, not a giant? Well, fame, of course, which is a result of not getting my work into the right hands, and also perhaps of my being a crummy writer.

Now, I am in no way comparing myself to Hemingway. I mean, the guy was truly a literary giant. He had a unique and compelling voice that could not be replicated.

But here’s my thinking: no one in the universe – no one – writes the way you and I do. No one. When we write something down, some sentence cleverly crafted to the very best of our ability, have we not added to the canon of human literature?

The canon of human literature. 

Wow. But isn’t that what we do? Don’t we add to this vast body of written works, making it richer and more diverse with our points of view and choices of words? With our thoughts. 

Does that not make us giants?

Alas, Santa gets the credit, but the elves make the toys and fill the sleigh, right? Santa is a giant, but what about the elves? Maybe each one is an unsung giant in their own field – a giant of a little wooden wheel hammerer. Nobody does it like Snoggnar – she’s a tiny little giant in her field.

So, now I’m thinking about adding another phrase to my mantra: Be a giant in your work.

I know. Adding an eighth platitude kind of messes up the symmetry of the magical seven, and I’m not ever sure what being a giant means. 

I think of Dr. Malcolm in Jurassic Park: “they’re, uh, standing on the shoulders of giants…”

Lemme know what you think!

And thank you for reading.

You big ol’ giant, you!

My Kingdom for a Scorpion

You’re a writer – you know how it goes. You get fixated on this idea, and it just won’t go away until you finally get it sprawled out on a piece of paper.

Same thing with videos.

During our visit to the SoCal Wing of the Commemorative Air Force for the California Air Museums project, Ron Fleishman, the Wing’s historian, told us this great story about something called The Battle of Palmdale.

The story’s about the powerful and massive Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat fighter, a single-engine airplane that can rightfully claim the lion’s share of air victories in the skies over the Pacific during WW II.

Like the compact disc, the cassette tape, and the LP vinyl record, technology bypassed these remarkable airplanes so quickly that they were obsolete within two years of the war’s end. By 1956 they were used as radio-controlled drone targets for guided missiles – they didn’t even rate a pilot.

So, anyway, this battle story involves one of these remote-control Hellcats that goes haywire and flies, completely out of control, over Los Angeles in 1956.

The Air Force dispatches two state-of-the-art F-89 Scorpion jets to shoot it down, but they fail. And not just fail, but, COMPLETELY fail, firing a total of 208 missiles at the lumbering old timer – every single one of them miss.

It’s a great story, and I think it would make a terrific video. Now, of course, you can’t quite get your hands on real airplanes, but, hey, what about 3D models?

You can score a good-looking Hellcat for five bucks on Turbosquid.

But an F-89? Fogeddaboudit!

I scrolled through literally thousands of models, wishing, and a’hoping, and a’praying that somebody mislabeled their model when they uploaded it. Hey, it could happen!

F-4s, F-15s, F-16s, F-18s, 22s,35s, 84s, 86s, 100s, even F-101 Voodoo fighter jets aplenty were to be found.

But an F-89 Scorpion? No, sir, not to be found in this man’s 3D universe. What’s up with that?

Actually, I did finally find one, and it was for free, but you had to sign up for this guy’s website, and that was, like, $65. Uh, no, thank you.

So, yes, I did find one. And, although I’d gladly trade my kingdom for a good model, I’m not uh idiot!

And that means the story has to stay on hold until I can figure out another way to shoot it. There are several videos on The Battle of Palmdale, but they all use old stock footage from the DOD.

Surely we can do better!

Hmm, how to acquire a Scorpion… and evil plot unfolds…

A New Venue

My wife tells me that I have two problems: I don’t listen to her, and, uh, something else.

The one time I DID listen to her recently, she suggested a great idea.

See, I’m a nerd. I get all excited about dopey stuff that doesn’t mean anything, and then I have to do something with it.

Enter California Air Museums, a site dedicated to inspiring young parents to bring their kids to California’s many air museums by presenting video tours and stories about the museums themselves.

All good and well, but the Holidays and the wintry weather have rather put a hitch in my museum-visiting git-along, so to speak. What to do?

“You’re a nerd,” she tells me. “You get all wrapped up in weird little pieces of information and details. Write about that.”

Enter One Motor, Many Planes, the first blog post in the new Stories feature on the website’s front page.

Casting the article as a story rather than a blog post gives it more gravity – more bottom. That’s a sailing term. See, sailing ships have a presence in the water, and the deeper the hull the more bottom she presents… eh.

I digress.

A funny side note to Motor story: the museum’s historian told me two entirely different aircraft, a hot combat bomber and a lumbering transport made use of the same engine. Isn’t that fascinating?

I began writing the story with that fact as my premise, only to find out in doing the research that he was not correct. Much digging and figuring out resulted in proving that he was correct, but not in the way he thought, and a much more interesting story.

Anyway, now I have to go try and remember what else my wife told me. Something about a fire…

On Ruins and Wreckage

I’m sitting in my kitchen on a terribly uncomfortable chair. We replaced the frumpy chair pads with nifty red ones for Christmas. Alas, the holiday ended, and the pads are packed away. O, how I long for those frumpy chair pads…

I hope your holiday was glorious and that your new year holds  nothing but grand promise.

My holiday ended finally just this last weekend, with the return of my daughter’s stuff to her college dorm. She’s officially ensconced in her small liberal arts school in what is right now the frigid wasteland of Central Oregon.

Oh come now, a frigid wasteland? you say with that subtle tone of parental correction, surely it cannot be as bad as that.

Listen, mister, or sister, I know what I know, and saw what I saw, see?

Actually, the ice storm was really quite beautiful, the trees, the fences, even the blades of grass perfectly outlined in ice.

We were stopped long enough on the freeway that I got to mess around with the quarter-inch thick sheet of ice on the K-rail divider. What was so amazing to me was that the vertical surfaces were just as coated as the flats and tops. How could this be?

My fingers are still cold.

We met some lovely people while stranded in Grant’s Pass – a guy from Hawaii and a girl from Denver, both of whom used to be in the oil business, but who now run a farm and sell pies. A guy from Baltimore who works at one of only four biodynamic wineries in the whole world.

Wait, where’s the writer’s story in this, you ask with that tone that really moans are you ever going to land this plane?

Okay, okay, okay, here we go…

Because of that mega ice storm that laid flat Central Oregon, why, I haven’t scheduled a fourth shoot for the California Air Museums project.

…crickets…

Yeah, see, we were both so wiped out from battling the ice storm (oh please, you moan) that I haven’t even turned on my computer since getting home Monday night.

…crickets…

And I haven’t put out a single query letter on my novel this entire year!

…yawns…

Well, there it is, isn’t it?

Central Oregon in ruins, my hosting career at a standstill, my novel in the dumpster.

…sad violin music…

Marketing-wise, I did plant a link to the California Air Museums site in this post. That’s pretty cool.

And, like my mom used to say, “Life ain’t beer and skittles, you know.”

Although I still don’t know what that means, let us remind ourselves that out of calamity comes creativity, out of ruin comes rebirth, and it ain’t over ’til it’s over.

Or until the fat lady sings, although I don’t quite get that one, either…

Of Captions and Mattresses

Hey – I discovered something you should never do! Well, I’ve actually stumbled upon quite a few. Phew. What a year!

So, the kids came home for the holidays – well, two out of three. The youngest daughter and the son and his wife. All was warm and cozy and happy, and the day after Christmas the son and his wife flew off to Omaha to embrace the balmy winter snow storm that dropped six inches…

The youngest daughter decided she’d like to stay the rest of her holiday vacay on the same bed the son and his wife had used. As the daughter’s bed had been brute-hauled into my wife’s office to make room for the son and his wife, no hearts were broken.

But, what to do with the daughter’s bed? The thing was easily 25 years old, and not worth a plugged nickel. We’ll call the garbage man!

Sure, says he. Put it out at the curb tomorrow morning and I’ll pick ‘er up for free. Won’t cost you a plugged nickel.

Well, my wife and I both work, see. So, we dutifully hauled the beast, bedframe, box spring, and twelve-ton twin-sized mattress down to the curb that night. What could go wrong with that?

Enter the Atmospheric River. Dang if it didn’t POUR on that poor mattress.

Two o’clock in the morning and I’m listening to the rain pounding on the roof, and I get the wise idea to put a tarp over this enormous marshmallow of a bed at the curb. OMG it rained and blew, and I had to lug the entire bed… thing… out a little into the street because it was blocking the gutter!

Now, I know the thing was already sodden, but I thought, maybe, if I could just keep extra water from coming in, maybe it would drain off into the now-unplugged gutter.

Just as I finish tying down the tarp, soaked to the bone, the rain lets up.

Sigh.

Also during her holiday vacay, my daughter suggested I add closed captions to the YouTube videos at California Air Museums.

Sure. No problem. Piece of cake. Alls ya gots ta do is tell YouTube that you want to use the closed-captions, and their AI does the rest.

Great!

I didn’t look until just last night, and OMG, they’re a MESS!

The AI tries to match the rhythm of the soundtrack, but just plain doesn’t spell or understand context or know placenames worth a plugged nickel.

Google counted spell Mugu to save its life! Mcgoo, Mago, MGOO…

And me, Mr. Professional, sent emails off to other museums, offering to come shoot videos at their facilities, unaware that I’d added these whack-a-doodle, nonsensical captions to my professional work!

I’ve spent the last two evenings fixing and correcting and spelling and spacing and timing… in truth, now they look pretty good.

But, note to self: do. not. trust. ai. It does some stuff pretty well. But closed captioning? Eh…

What ties these two stories together, of course is my daughter, who has jetted off to Hawaii, yes, Hawaii, to finish out her holiday vacay.

Probably ran out of helpful suggestions…

Right off the Pier

Hey, it’s a new year. Why not make it a new you, too? All it takes is a couple of new year’s resolutions, a little elbow grease, and some stick-to-it-iveness. You’ve got all that, dontcha?

You’re a writer, you know how it goes. You best days are those spent, keyboard at hand, stirring the creative pot and letting stuff fly. My goal was to tap into that bliss.

So, one of my resolutions was to write a good piece of fiction every day. Every day, Louie, and let no day pass unwritten.

Well, let’s see. Today is 4 January. I’ve been busy, working at work, writing non-fiction promotional stuff, making videos, building 3D models. And now I’m sitting here, writing this.

Yesterday was 3 January. Worked at working, you know, working at work. Got home, was kinda tired. Didn’t do much beyond play solitaire.

Before that was 2 January. Worked at work (are we sensing a theme yet?) and came home and messed with the boats.

Boats? Yes, boats. Yachts. Seacraft. My darling love and I acquired two kayaks, yes, paddle-your-keester-around-the-sea kayaks. Really nice ones.

The little boat, a 10-footer, was on sale at Dick’s Sporting Goods. The salesguy was himself a kayaker, but seemed to have been hit in the head by a paddle one too many times. How much is this boat, he repeats our question. How much? Let me see, here. I should be able to figure this out… I figured it out, and he agreed with my assessment.

The other boat is a lithe 14-foot beauty. Man, she’s nice. The owner was asking a lot of money, but dropped the price to a third without any haggling. He was like, just take it – I’ve got to get rid of it. In thinking about it, now I rather hope it floats…

FYI, I am the worst haggler in history. I mean, bad. I bought a car once, and asked the salesman if it would be okay if I paid the price that was in the windshield. He said only if he could add a ten dollar consultation fee, to which I readily agreed.

Idiot.

Anyway, last year my wife and I acquired a Honda pickup truck. My lovely, trusty Ford was just beginning to shift on its own, without waiting for me, which was a sure sign that the constant-variable-transmission was just about to become inconstant. I donated her to one of those cars-for-causes charities – they looked at the battered paint, and the 248,000 miles on the odo, and said “gee. thanks.”

To get the boats, I had to fit a rack in the back of the Ridgeline, which is no mean feat, whether you have mean feet or not. But, now that we have the truck, we have no excuse not to get the boats, which we did.

And that’s how I spent the night of the second – installing the racks on the truck.

I am most sorry, but I’ve lost the thread.

Oh. Fiction. Write a piece a day. That was my plan.

Not a word so far this year. Every day, every shmay, I say.

This is sad. Even as I sit here, writing this, I’m thinking man, I should be writing fiction. Here goes:

I thought she loved me, but she didn’t. She was interested, but only in the reaction she caused in me, not in me myself. It took a few terse conversations, filled with misguided inuendo, for each of us to see that simple truth. I think of her, sometimes.

There. Fiction. Well, not really…

Anyway, good luck with YOUR resolutions. As far as mine go, I seem to have driven right off the pier.

Lucky for me, I’ve got yachts!

F***K Plan B

That’s a headline, right? Plan B? You know Plan B. It’s the one you always have because you always need a backup plan, right? Maybe not so much…

If you really want to listen to something fun on your long holiday drive, you might listen to Arnold Schwarzenegger read his book, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life. As an action hero kind of guy, he really doesn’t pull any punches.

The book is meant to help you find a way to be happy. My guess is that he’s kinda preachin’ to the choir, as the people who will go buy his book are already somewhat self-activated.

But, if you’re unhappy, maybe it will help. Perhaps you will find some degree of self-activation.

That’s the point of his book: get yourself activated. Don’t sit around wondering what to do. Figure out your vision, write it down. Make a plan to go get it. Don’t have time? He shows you how to find two hours a day to accomplish your vision.

But, he warns you that napping is for babies. And that you can only rest and relax if you are old and tired or something. He’s kinda hard on those who aren’t hale and hearty…

My favorite takeaway? F**k Plan B.

According to Arnie, the only reason you would come up with a Plan B is if you plan to fail at Plan A. Why do you need a secondary plan if your first one is good? If you are careful with Plan A, you’ll never need a Plan B.

Plan B is just an easy way out of accomplishing your vision. It’s an escape clause, which means you never planned to accomplish your vision in the first place.

F**k Plan B.

To that end, I finally released the third installment in the California Air Museums series. It’s a visit to the Commemorative Air Force, Southern California Wing.

That’s my vision: to build a library of videos, in a fun and easy-to-navigate site, for the parents of STEM students, that they might see these videos and take their kids to these museums and get them interested in engineering. Tomorrow’s engineers today! There is no Plan B for this project. Just do it. Get in the chopper!

And, the novel I’ve written. You’re a writer. You know how it goes. Do you seek a publisher, or do you publish yourself? Either way, you’re in charge of marketing. Either way, sales are up to you, bucko.

I’ve approached a few agents. They’re now mostly using a standardized submission form, which is just so de-humanizing.

Demoralising.

The farther I travel down this road, I’m starting to think that maybe self-publishing isn’t all bad.

But now I wonder: is that just a Plan B?

A Fun Little Video

So, it turns out, if you want to do something, or need something done, sometimes the best way to do it is to actually do it. How weird…

Here’s a new video on the Point Mugu Missile Park, in beautiful Port Hueneme, California.

My wife did the camera work while I did the yammering. It’s such a tiny little museum, you can’t make an epically long video about it! But it was great fun.

This California Air Museums project is both a lot of work and great fun. It rather encompasses all of the things that I like to do, beyond sleep in and enjoy a bagel and a cup of coffee with my lovely wife on a weekend morning out on the patio.

There’s a writer’s story in all of this, and that’s why I’m sharing it with you.

I’ve always felt that a writer writes. A writer who dreams of writing isn’t a writer. That’s a dreamer.

My mom and dad were great parents, and we had a great growing up. After he passed, I was cleaning out my dad’s closet and found a gorgeous half-painted painting.

It was one of those Southwestern style jobs, with flat-bottomed clouds and zig-zag lightning that were so popular in the 1940’s. Beautiful colors scrolled across half of the canvas. Only half. The other half was penciled in.

He had put the painting aside to raises his kids, and never quite got back to it. Life got in the way.

That painting absolutely broke my heart.

And it drove home to me the point that if you want to do it, you better go do it. Nobody but you is going to live your dream.

So, if you’re sitting on the fence, get off the fence. Just get off the fence and go do it.

Oh, and don’t forget to watch my video first!

The Ship is Launched

You’re a writer – you know how it is. You think about a project, and dream about it, and you wonder and wonder how it will turn out, all before you actually start it. And then, one day, you start it. And it’s entirely different than what you thought.

The first episode of California Air Museums is on the, well, air. Actually, it’s on YouTube, but YouTube is as much the new TV as 60 is the new 40, and orange is the new, well, it was the…

Anyway, you can view the first episode here.

My wonderful wife stood in as camera operator, and the Mojave Air Museum stood in as the museum. It was a ton of fun!

We got there around 2 in the afternoon and spent a good ten minutes wandering around the Mojave Air and Space Port looking for it, only to discover we’d driven right past it at the entrance. Oops.

No one was there, which made it a great place to try out our video production process. Even though I wore a lavalier microphone, the stiff wind obliterated, like, 90% of what I said. Luckily, I tend to babble, so we didn’t miss anything.

You know how it goes – most of what you shoot goes on the cutting room floor anyway. Of course, with video, there IS no cuttong room anymore…

We shot about 35 gigabytes of footage over the span of an hour and a half, and I have to tell you: this video business is a gas!

And the airplanes themselves were terrific. If you’re an aviation geek, or, like me, not too bright but like the airplanes, you will love this little musuem!

What this video does is formally launch California Air Museums as a thing. The site is revamped, and now holds slots for the many museum visits to come.

Zoom!

you see what I did there by writing zoom – kind of like saying we’re having fun and at the same time making a kind of airplane hand gesture sort of thing  – oh, yeah. you caught that…