If you didn’t watch LOST this past week and don’t want to read spoilers, stop reading now.

I will not warn you a second time.

Okay, this is your third and last warning…

Seriously. If you don’t want spoilers, go away now.

Okay, here we go. OMG! Everybody freakin’ died!!!

Okay, that last bit was for the stragglers that wanted to complain about it being spoiled for them. The real stuff, for those that watched, is coming up. (Last chance if you don’t want to read spoilers…)

Okay, so this is the umpteenth time I’ve used “Okay” in this post. So, the question on everyone’s mind now is, who is Sayid now?

Well, let’s go through the options, okay? (There’s that word again…)

Sayid is Jacob

This appears to be a popular theory. The Man in Black/Smokie/Esau has been appearing as Locke, so it makes sense that Jacob would come back as Sayid, right? What!? First, note that the fake Locke is not using Locke’s body, as evidenced by Locke’s dead body being found. Since Sayid’s apparently dead body is the same body that came back to life, why believe that he is now Jacob? Even if you want to believe that holding Sayid in the special water was a process for allowing Jacob to enter and use Sayid’s body, consider what Sayid said when he appeared to come back to life: “What happened?” If he were Jacob, why would he be asking, especially when a short time earlier the deceased Jacob was telling Hurley what to do. If we are to believe that Jacob has powers or something beyond the capabilities of a normal person, it would seem that he would know what’s going on, even upon finding himself in Sayid’s body, which, if planned, would increase the odds that he’d know what was going on. So, while a possibility, my current thinking is that Sayid is not Jacob. Remember, Jacob has been interacting (or manipulating) this group since way back when, and I think Jacob’s plan presumably involves something more than using Sayid’s body as a vessel.

Sayid is Locke

Locke was supposed to lead the Others. That’s why the Man in Black/Smokie/Esau took advantage of the situation to get Ben to kill Jacob. Had Locke not been supposed to lead the Others, there would be little advantage for fake Locke to be, well, fake Locke rather than someone else. So, it’s reasonable to assume that Locke is important to Jacob’s plans. Was Locke being dead part of that plan? Or, did he need Locke alive? Of course, it is also a stretch to think that Sayid was manipulated into being part of the group that crashed on the island so that his body could eventually be used as a vessel for a reincarnated Locke. But, maybe Jacob is winging it now. Or, did he plan for the Man in Black/Smokie/Esau killing him. Also, remember, too, that fake Locke told Ben that Locke’s final thoughts were of confusion. And, what were the first words out of Sayid’s mouth? “What happened?”

Sayid is Sayid

Yeah, that’s the simplest to explain. He’s still Sayid, just changed as was Ben when he was saved by the same process. And, if he is Sayid, it’s not unreasonable to think that, if you thought you were dying and not going to live and suddenly found yourself alive and seemingly well, your first thought might be “What happened?”

So, I’m thinking that Sayid is Sayid is the strongest possibility, with Sayid being Locke a close second and Sayid being Jacob being a farther last.

What do you think?

As you may or may not know, because I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned it and don’t feel like looking it up, I have been working on a new design for one of my under-attentioned sites which I will be relaunching, well, as soon as I can wrap things up.

So, if you like reading and talking about science fiction (scifi) or speculative fiction, listen up…

So, if you like reading and talking about fantasy fiction, listen up…

So, if you like reading and talking about horror fiction, listen up…

So, if you like reading and talking about bizarre (bizarro) fiction, listen up…

Okay? I will need some testers. People I know. People I can trust. That means you, if I know and trust you and you’re not a complete psycho.

So, if you think that is you, speak up now or forever hold your peace, or at least hold your peace until the public relaunch of the site, and then only if I decide to let you in then. You know. You hesitate and you takes your chances.

You must like to read.

You must have patience.

You probably shouldn’t be offended easily.

You must be talkative (type-a-tive?).

You know where to leave your pledge to be treated like a number and a guinea pig. Oh, no, I didn’t mean in the Halls of Congress. I meant below…

Can a design be sophisticated and cute?

Guess I may find out soon.

Anyway, sometimes I hate teasing y’all, but, you know, there are times I cannot come up with something to write while at the same time I have things to write about but I can’t tell you. Or rather I don’t want to tell you just yet. Which means part of me wants to tell you, part of me says I can’t tell you yet and, since I occasionally listen to myself, all you get is a teaser.

Thus, the image above. Which is a teaser. Though not exactly. It’s a representation of a teaser. Or, rather it’s not related to what I’m doing except in theme. That is, what you see here you won’t see on what I’m working on, except in a completely different way, which is to say the image you see here won’t be seen at all.

And, while you figure out that hot mess, I’ll get back to work.

Oh, and say “Hi!” to Mike Aragona, who is, at the moment, the only one who knows what I’m talking about. And, by that, I mean that he knows slightly more than you do but only slightly. Or more.

Basically, you’re all like Pete’s tiny mushrooms. In which case, Mike would be the big mushroom that’s blocking you from the moonlight, but you’re all pretty much stuck growing in the dark.

You know what would be cool? A glow-in-the-dark mushroom. Oooh. Must add that to my project list…

In a couple posts this week, I’ve mentioned an old cabinet I’ve been cleaning out.

When cleaning it out on Sunday, I found this:

That’s a bag of spice. No, nothing weird. It’s the Spice, as in melange.

Back in the mid-eighties, I was in school and one of the books we had to read for our English class was Dune. Well, as it happened, the movie Dune came out around the same time. At present, I don’t recall whether the movie was being filmed or had already been released. The movie came out in December of 1984. I remember reading this in the spring, so it had to be spring of 1984 or spring of 1985.

Anyway, the teacher tried to tie things in with the movie a bit (so I’m thinking it’s more likely to have been 1985) and one of our assignments was to make our own props. I think this was an exercise in showing how people envision different things they read and that not everyone would interpret the book the same. Probably. Then again, we weren’t special effects and props people, so the things we made didn’t necessarily reflect how we envisioned them but rather how we envisioned them and could fashion them out of things from around the house and without the skill set of a professional prop maker.

So, one of my props was the spice. I made mine from sugar, cinnamon and (I think perhaps) a bit of nutmeg. It’s been 24 years, so I don’t remember for certain, but I’m pretty sure that’s what’s in there.

Evidently, I still have the spice. And here it is.

I also made a Fremen dagger, which was supposed to be a sandworm’s tooth. And also the dunes of Arrakis with a sandworm.

And they let us into school with that. I bet these days you couldn’t carry a bag of spice and a sandworm tooth dagger into school without landing yourself in trouble.

I received this Star Trek: Enterprise NX-01 miniature display model on Monday. It goes nicely with my Phoenix display model which arrived on Friday.

I’m reasonably pleased with how the photo turned out for this one. I took the photo with the model against a dark background. Then, with the magic of Photoshop, I created a starfield background and then used a radial blur to create the illusion of motion. Warp Factor 5, Trip!

If you want your own, you better act fast! It looks like this must be a popular one. I bought mine for $16.95 but, at the time of this writing, it is $24.95. I guess I should have bought two!

It’s incredibly detailed for such a small model. Quality-wise, I think it is better looking than the Phoenix model. On the Phoenix, some of the seams are noticeable when looking at it up close. On the Enterprise NX-01 model, there are only a couple spots (on the supports behind the saucer section) where you notice the seams when looking at it up close. Otherwise, the seams are very well hidden in the design of the ship.

The display model comes in three pieces. The Enterprise itself is one piece. No assembly required. The display stand is two pieces: the stand and the mounting arm. I’m not too crazy about the mounting arm. It has a ball joint so you can position the ship in a variety of ways, but I find that it doesn’t adjust as well as it should. Best bet is probably to position it the way you like it, then never touch it again. I don’t know how well that ball joint, which is just plastic, would hold up to continual adjustments.

Overall, I like it a lot. Both the Enterprise and the Phoenix are plastic models, but they are done so well that they look like pewter models. And, because of their small size, they make it easy to put together a collection of your favorite ships that look nice but don’t take up a lot of space.

You have no idea what this is.

That’s okay. I have no idea where my story is going.

Let me rephrase that. I know where the story is going. I know how it begins, though a lot remains in flux. But, there is a whole middle section that is a complete blank.

It wouldn’t be so bad if I had an idea of how I was going to transition from the beginning to the middle, but I’m not sure how the beginning ends.

And, that’s where I end up stuck every time I look to work on the story. I keep refining the details, getting portions of the backstory to work better, but that beginning is generally elusive.

I sometimes wonder if I picked the right character to make the focus of the story, but I keep coming back to the conclusion that I have. The tough part is developing the character with his personal struggle against the storyline.

Take Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, for example. The storyline was Indiana Jones battles Nazis, but his personal struggle is developing a relationship with his father and that personal struggle is really what the movie is about. The Holy Grail and the Nazis are really secondary.

So, that’s basically where I’m stuck. I know the storyline (i.e. the Holy Grail and the Nazis part of my story) but I keep getting stuck on the character’s personal struggle. I know what it is, but I remain stuck on how to illustrate it.

This is what arrived in the mail yesterday:

What is it?

Well, it is a Battlestar Galactica Hasbro Titanium Series 4 Diecast Mini Cylon Raider [Classic].

I’ve wanted one of these since I was a kid. My parents took me shopping, or, more likely, they went shopping and dragged me along. Anyway, we went down the toy aisle, and there were two things I wanted, but I could only pick one. I wanted both! I guess you can figure out which one I didn’t pick…

I suppose that sometimes you remember, and still want, those things you couldn’t have. So, ever since then, I’ve wanted a Cylon Raider. Of course, nowadays, those “classics” sell for big bucks, especially if you want them in good, like-new or new-in-box condition.

So, I was buying some stuff I needed and I came across this miniature. That’s nice because it is (mostly) what I wanted, and it’s a miniature which is a plus because it won’t take up a lot of room and it’s pretty low-cost as well which is a definite bonus these days. Sure, I probably shouldn’t have bought it, but the 30-year desire to own a Cylon raider culminated in that moment.

Of course, someday, perhaps when I’m rich, I may come across the actual model I longed for oh so many years ago, new-in-box, and I will grab that one up too.

Until then, I have this little guy.

In case you hadn’t noticed, I was away for the weekend. You may not have noticed, as I had posts, such as they were, scheduled to appear on both days of the weekend, since I would otherwise not have had the means by which to post them. On the other hand, if you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed my absence, since I wasn’t there to tweet anything.

Anyway, I took my computer with me and, while I didn’t have a lot of time to work on things, I did do some work on a website and also my story I’ve been working on. (Here too.)

As far as the story goes, right now I’m still working on the outline. Previously, I’ve essentially just gone ahead and written things as they go. I mean, I had a general direction and certain things in mind, but I would let thing unfold as I wrote them. With this story, I am doing an outline first, so everything is planned in advance. That should save me some amount of tweaking later, as hopefully it will allow me to create a story that makes sense ahead of time so that I won’t have to go in later and fix the inevitable loopholes that seem to come up otherwise.

That being said, I don’t think it is necessary to always have an outline, though you should have a general plot in mind. For example, I have another story in progress (I say “in progress” though I actually haven’t written anything new for it in a couple years) that I wrote as it went. I had a general idea in mind, but I let the characters go and do what felt natural for them to do. And, that worked very well.

So, I think the outline vs. no outline debate comes to whatever works best for you as the author and/or what works best for a particular story. Different writers have different approaches, and I don’t think there is a one-size-fits-all method. Go with what works. If what you’re doing isn’t working for you, try something else. Or, if your usually method isn’t working for your current story, try a different one! Don’t let your creativity get bogged down by methodology. Your plan of attack for writing a story should be one that best suits crafting and writing that particular story and not one that chains your creative energies. A story that never gets finished due to poor planning is little different from a story that never gets finished because of too much planning!

At any rate, I think the outline method will work best for this particular story, especially since (a) there is an extensive backstory that I need to keep straight and (b) this is a “prequel” so I have to keep in mind the things that will happen in the “main” story.

My outline is roughly something like this:

Beginning
Middle
End

Naturally, the middle is the bulk of the story and the beginning and the end are the shorter portions. I know the ending; I just need to flesh it out more. But, that’s going to depend on what occurs in the middle, as to how the ending will precisely work out. I’ve spent a lot of the time on the beginning, working out everything that happens there and sets the story in motion. So, with that in mind, this is what my outline really looks like:

Beginning - some stuff happens
Middle - what the frak happens here???
End - stuff happens and the story ends

The middle is the bulk of the story, as I mentioned, yet I don’t know precisely what all will happen there! I know some portions, as I’ve already written them before I started developing an outline, but it’s a matter of figuring out where to fit them in.

The biggest issue is the timeline. Originally, the story was going to cover a period of a few hours. Now, however, I’ve changed that. The beginning takes place years earlier. Then, there’s a portion that would need to take place over a period of a few months, and then a portion and the ending which would take place over a matter of hours. What I need to figure out is how best to transition that. I guess Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade did that, with the opening taking place when he was a kid, and then later following up years later. Maybe I should watch that again or look for a novelization…

As I mentioned the other day, I’ve been taking a look at some of my novels-in-progress. Now, while I should be working on story #2, which is the one I scanned in notes and stuff for, I instead feel myself drawn to story #5.

The other night, I resolved (somewhat) the plot hole that I had with story #5. The problem was that I needed a certain character to live, but there wasn’t a strong enough reason to let him live. A bigger issue is that the villains really didn’t need to be where they were. I’ve resolved that problem. Now, I just need to figure out how they are going to let the character live without having him ruin their plans.

This particular story is actually one of two stories. The part I’m working on is, basically, the prequel. It is the backstory I developed while working on the main story. It just makes sense to do the prequel first. For one thing, the events of the prequel motivate the actions of some of the characters in the main story. The main story has seven main characters.

The prequel has a story, but it doesn’t really have any main characters. There are two characters that were my main characters, but, in analyzing the story, I don’t know if they can really stay as the main characters for the purposes of moving the story along. The one is outside the sphere of activity. That is, he is not directly involved in the primary plot of the story. If he knew what was going on, he’d be able to do something about it. Instead, he doesn’t find out until later how involved he was. With the other character, he’s perhaps too good at what he does. He’s not going to be going through the personal struggles that are necessary to move the story along. There is no growth for either one of these characters.

Of course, the story could be restructured to show their earlier struggles and mistakes and the events that led them to what will be their big moment. That would be a possibility.

Another possibility is to focus more on the character-who-must-live. That’s the one I mentioned earlier as being the one I needed to keep alive though the villains (previously) didn’t have a strong reason to do so. This character is one of the seven main characters in the main story. So, drawing him out here might take away from his development in the main story. Still, it’s workable, except for one small factor: he needs to fail. I don’t think people would want to read a story about a character, only to see someone else swoop in at the end and save the day. Could work in a comedy, but I don’t think it would be doable here.

Through the midst of this, however, another character has risen to the top of the pack. There is a character that was an important part of the story, but wasn’t necessarily a major character. A while back, I had an idea for a character’s background, and I had two characters that it would have been workable for. One was in the prequel (this character) and the other was in the main story. I opted for this character, because I knew the resolution of his personal conflict, and that worked better with the plot of the prequel than of the main story. It wasn’t going to be a major plotline. It was only going to be a subplot, a B storyline. However, the more I think about it, the more I think that it might be workable to have this character be the main character.

So, I am currently tossing around ideas in my head as to whether this will work and how to make it work. It’s interesting that it isn’t the type of character or story I set out to write, but somewhat of a natural progression over time.

Maybe, just maybe, sometimes procrastination pays off.

A couple weeks ago, I mentioned some of my writing projects and choosing which one to work on.

On many of them, it’s been quite a while since I worked on them. Of course, there are the usual reasons like time and other priorities, but I also realized there was the additional problem of an obstacle I put in my own way.

I keep my writing projects in a fire-proof cabinet in the basement. I have file after file of things I’ve done, things I’ve had done for me, and things that are works in progress.

While I would have a copy of a particular story on the computer, any hand-written notes were stored in the cabinet. So, if I wanted to write something, I’d have to get it out. This became a hassle. As such, it became an obstacle to working on a writing project. I might have time to write something, but then by the time I’d dig it out, well, I wouldn’t have as much time left. Better to just work on something else instead, right?

Well, I picked one of the stories I mentioned (can you guess which one?), and got out all my hand-written notes and scanned them. I put them all together in a PDF file. So, now I have my notes handy whenever I have the time to work on the story. Now, to just figure out the resolution to the cliffhanger I left off on. Too bad I didn’t write that bit down…

What obstacles are you throwing in the way of your own success?