Category: blog

blog

not in our stars, but in ourselves

Posted on By Wil

Remember, when you were younger, all the times you would go outside at night, just to look up at the stars? Remember how happy it made you feel? Remember taking out a star chart, so you could find a constellation or a galaxy? Remember how cool it felt to know that, even if you couldn’t see the visible light from a Messier Object, you at least knew you were looking at it? Remember putting down a blanket and watching meteor showers all night long? Remember the first time you saw a satellite flare and convinced yourself you’d seen a flying saucer?

Remember how magical and humbling and inspiring it felt to just go outside specifically to look at the stars and planets, sometimes with a telescope, other times with binoculars, most times with just your eyes? Remember the first time you really thought about the reality of our existence? That we’re tiny little specks of life on an improbably perfect planet, speeding through space at incomprehensible speeds, protected by a thin layer of atmosphere from specks of dust and rock that are also speeding around in space, just like we are?

Does anyone else remember that? Or is it just me, getting older, rewatching Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, and desperately wanting to revisit a time when it didn’t seem like our improbably perfect planet was teetering on the brink of catastrophe?

When’s the last time you got away from your phone or tablet or TV or whatever, pulled your head out of the garbage fire we’re living in, and went outside, just to look at the stars, pick out some constellations, and feel the size and magnitude of our universe?

I can’t remember the last time I did. I can’t even tell you how long it’s been. That makes me feel profoundly sad.

So tonight, I’m going to do a some stargazing. If I’m lucky, I may even find what I’m looking for.

blog

this is how i know i’m a writer

Posted on By Wil

I wrote this at 1am local time last night:

I’m in New York.

I’m jetlagged. I have to get up in six hours for an important meeting and then an important shoot.

I’m trying to fall asleep, and I’m thinking about how I can rewrite the first few paragraphs of my novel, because while I was proofing it today, I kept feeling like it could be better. Like, it’s fine, but I can be better, you know?

So I’m finally starting to drift off to sleep, and my brain goes HEY HERE IS THE WAY TO CHANGE THE BEGINNING OF THE STORY, SO YOU ARE HAPPY WITH IT.

And I go, “Fuck, brain, I have to get up in seven hours and I’m finally starting to fall asleep. Can you remember this for me and we’ll do it in the morning?”

And my brain is all, “I can’t make any promises, bro.”

So I am all, “Don’t call me bro. Ever.”

And my brain says, “Sorry. That was a joke that didn’t land.”

And I say, “Okay, so you’ll remember this for me in the morning?”

And my brain is all, “I’m going to have to wake you up a whole bunch so we can keep this particular idea alive until you write it down.”

So I sigh, reach over to the table next to my bed in this hotel, and pick up my laptop. I open it up, turn the brightness all the way down, and write the idea that I had.

And it’s good. It’s really good. It’s *better* than what was there before.

I’m glad I dragged myself out of near-sleep to write it down, but now I am wide awake and I still have to start a long day in six hours, and I’m kind of fucked.

But I don’t care, because I wrote down this thing that’s really good, and I feel good about it.

And this is how I know that I am a writer, and that being a writer is what I want to do with the rest of my life.

blog

2458 words cut (77348 remain) on the revisions of All We Ever Wanted Was Everything

Posted on By Wil

I usually put these updates on my Tumblr thingy, but this one is of particular significance, so I’m putting it front and center on my blog.

I’m pretty sure I just finished the final draft, including revisions, of the novel I’ve been working on for a little over a year. As a matter of fact, I’m going to send this final draft to my editor right now. I’ll be right back.

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blog

The world is a terrible place right now, and that’s largely because it is what we make it.

Posted on By Wil
Marlowe Wheaton is adorable.
Here’s a picture of Marlowe to make this post suck less.

As most of you know, I deactivated my Twitter account earlier this month. It had been a long time coming, for a whole host of reasons, but Twitter’s decision to be the only social network that gives Alex Jones a platform to spew hate, hurt innocent people, and incite violence was the final straw for me. But I haven’t regretted leaving for even one second. Having that endless stream of hate and anger and negativity in my pocket wasn’t good for me (and I don’t think it’s good for anyone, to be honest).

I was on Twitter from just about the very beginning. I think I’m in the first couple thousand accounts. I remember when it was a smallish group of people who wanted to have fun, make jokes, share information and tips on stuff that was interesting, and oh so many pictures of our pets. It was awesome.

It started to get toxic slowly at first, then all at once, starting with the misogynist dipshits who were behing the gate-which-shall-not-be-named. That was clearly a turning point for Twitter, and it never really recovered from it. I watched, in real time, as the site I loved turned into a right wing talk radio shouting match that made YouTube comments and CSPAN call-ins seem scholarly. We tried for a couple of years to fight back, to encourage Twitter to take a stand against bad actors (HA HA LIKE ME BECAUSE I AM A BAD ACTOR RIGHT YOU GOT ME HA HA HA). Twitter doesn’t care about how its users are affected by themselves, though. Twitter cares about growth and staying on the good side of President Shitler’s tantrums.

I mean, honestly, the most lucid and concise indictment I can give Twitter is: it’s the service that Donald Trump uses to communicate with and incite his cultists.

Anyway, enough about how terrible Twitter is. We all know how terrible it is. That’s never going to change, by the way.I know some very good people who are working on making Twitter better, but I honestly don’t think they can overcome the institutional inertia that has allowed it to get to the point its at now. It may get incrementally better, but the fundamental problem of random, mostly-anonymous people being terrible isn’t going to change, because that’s not a Twitter problem. That’s a humanity — and specifically a social media — problem.

I thought that if I left Twitter, I could find a new social network that would give it some competition (Twitter’s monopoly on the social space is a big reason it can ignore people who are abused and harassed, while punishing people for reporting their attackers), so I fired up this account I made at Mastodon a long time ago.

I thought I’d find something different. I thought I’d find a smaller community that was more like Twitter was way back in 2008 or 2009. Cat pictures! Jokes! Links to interesting things that we found in the backwaters of the internet! Interaction with friends we just haven’t met, yet! What I found was … not that.

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