Albigensia Press

Priming the Pump (Part III)

To get over the hurdle of getting to write, I’ve already talked about using this blog or recording my audiobook to get over the initial fear of the blank page. However, the best system I’ve been using to get the urge to write turned out to be the part of writing I hate the most.

“Writing is re-writing” is a slogan I put on my computer when I was editing my first novel back in the nineties. I remember that big vacuum-tube monitor on my grandparents’ kitchen nook where I set up my computer to write. (I was in college, my grandparents were in Texas for the summer, I got to use the house.) I had already written 500 single-spaced pages of a novel that turned out never to see the light of day. Mostly because it was crap, partly because it was rejected by publishers, and now, because it’s hopelessly out of date. This was a different obstacle; going back through what I thought came out perfect the first time and saying “How do I make this better?”

What I needed was someone else to read what I wrote and make some suggestions on how to improve it. What I thought I had was a co-author; I printed and mailed him copies of my first drafts, and since his name was going to be on the page, I thought that would make him incentivized to actually work on it. However, when he dropped out of college, we didn’t have that daily connection to work on the story, and between being depressed, working, and physically distant, he never wrote one damned word afterwards.

I keep telling myself I forgave him for that, but then I keep bringing up this story, so… have I?

This has led to a long tradition of my friends saying they’d read something of mine and then blowing me off. And yeah, that hurts. Especially when I need an editor that I can’t afford to publish books no one reads. Thankfully, technology has come to save me. The much maligned AI chatbots, which will probably kill so many careers, has already started to kill my brother-in-law’s career as an editor. (I can’t afford him either.) He also is physically in another state and it takes time for him to read and make suggestions. AI can do it in 15 seconds.

I actually use two chatbots to do my initial editing with. I used to use Microsoft Copilot for initial run through, but even though it has the “conversation” that I’ve written my current trilogy in throughout, it doesn’t check further back than… oh, a couple weeks of transcripts? And I understand – this is a free service and there’s a limit to how much processing power it will provide me. However, I discovered Google Gemini does go back through the whole conversation and does a better job of line-level editing for me.

For the second draft, I run it through Claude. This chatbot is amazing, it does everything I want it to, and it does it well. If I want it to crank out extensive fan-fic histories combining the Act of Union in 1707 with the rise of the Ministry of Magic (they are connected, my friends!), it writes a compelling essay on the subject. But man, are they stingy with their processing time. If you’re trying to type during the work day (whistling nervously), then I get one chapter edit before it locks me out for five hours. If I wanted to spend $20 to $100/month, I’d hire my brother!

However, having that immediate feedback on my writing, really inspires me to write more. If I start the day with having the chatbots going back over what I wrote the previous day, that really gets me going to keep writing. Now, do I always take their advice? No. However, sometimes it comes up with better ways to write lines than I ever used. So my story is… 5% written by AI, but if I wanted it to write the story instead, that would kill the fun I’m having! And personally, I think it comes out better.

If you’re curious what an AI edited, human written original piece looks like, check out No Such Wizard, my recent novel. If you’re a dedicated Kindle user like I am, it’s only $0.99. Check it out. If you’re a cheapskate like me, I still want you to read it, but you can check it out on An Archive of Our Own (AO3) with simpler formatting, but the words are all the same. Enjoy!

Tags: writing, books, editing, friends, AI

Comments Leave a Comment
Categories My Books, My Life

Priming the Pump (Part II)

9 Jul

When you’re facing your fear of the “blank page,” I’ve been developing a lot of fun little tools to help me get over that hump. However, there’s another I’ve only recently learned that I didn’t expect. What inspires you better than having to record your previous book?

I didn’t expect this blog post would extend into more than one post, but as I thought about it, different tricks in getting your writing juices going requires a little extra time to explain. So yesterday was about how blogging can get you started (as it is now), but I also want to spend some time talking about what I was doing before this; recording my audiobook.

This is one of those obstacles I thought was going to be too difficult for me to overcome. Who can survive recording their own book for hours. Plus I have a personal distaste for the sound of my own voice; “who wants to list me drone on for hours on end!” However, since recording voice-overs is part of my job, I knew I had all the skills necessary to accomplish this. I had done it many times before. All I had to do was transition my skills to a longer style recording.

When tackling any insurmountable task, the first job is to break the task down into small, bite-size chunks. In this case, since I wrote about 3-5 pages (my pages, single-spaced, 12 point Arial font) per chapter, I figured if I did a chapter a day, that wasn’t going to be that difficult. Each chapter seems to take about 20-30 minutes to record, even with stopping and restarting due to mistakes (do you hard it is to say “Woolworth?”)

What I didn’t expect was how much I would like it. I frequently cram in another chapter while recording. While I’m rereading my work, I’m realizing, “Man, I wish I had flushed this out better,” or “These characters have developed so much since then.” It really gets me excited about tackling this story again. So even when I’m faced with the “how am I going to make this scene exciting,” recording another chapter of my audiobook does inspire me to tackle it again.

Although I’m going to admit, Chapter Thirteen of No Such President was a real challenge to get through. Making a council meeting interesting while throwing in speeches…. ooof! Why did I outline this chapter?! 🙂

Hopefully, you’ll get a chance to listen to my audiobook soon. If you can’t wait that long, go ahead and read No Such Wizard, my recent novel, before I can get the audio version online. If you’re a dedicated Kindle user like I am, it’s only $0.99. Check it out. If you’re a cheapskate like me, I still want you to read it, but you can check it out on An Archive of Our Own (AO3) with simpler formatting, but the words are all the same. Enjoy!

Tags: audiobook, books, preparation, writing

Comments Leave a Comment
Categories My Books, My Life

Priming the Pump (Part I)

8 Jul

The hardest part about writing is starting with a blank page. When there is nothing in front of you, nothing to work of, it is probably the most frightening obstacle you have to face. So how do you get past this hurdle? Simple; write about something else!

The purpose of my blog is to attract people to read more of my writing, but over the years, I’ve also discovered it has another purpose. It helps build up my desire to actually write more. When I’m stuck on an idea or not sure where to go, simply writing in my blog helps me get past the fear of having nothing to write.

There’s a scene in the movie Finding Forrester where the J.D. Salinger character (Forrester) is teaching the young kid how to write. He recommends starting to type by copying the first few lines off of something else he wrote. Once he does, he finds that the words come easier and the essay builds quite well. The problem that has to be resolved at the end of the story is that the kid forgets to take off the first couple of lines that he cribbed from (what turned out to be) a published story.

He also recommends banging on the keys, which drives my wife nuts, but I thoroughly recommend as well.

There are many days I don’t feel like writing or not sure if I want to write the next chapter because certain things have to be resolved that are not as fun to write. Things like action sequences… but once you start typing, you’re more likely to finish than if you did nothing at all. Then everything can be edited once its down on paper, but that’s a story for another post.

If you’ve read this far, why not read No Such Wizard, my recent novel. If you’re a dedicated Kindle user like I am, it’s only $0.99. Check it out. If you’re a cheapskate like me, I still want you to read it, but you can check it out on An Archive of Our Own (AO3) with simpler formatting, but the words are all the same. Enjoy

Tags: blog, books, preparation, writing

Comments Leave a Comment
Categories My Books, My Life

Tunes to Devastate Fantasy Universes To

7 Jul

What do you listen to while writing? You might have different tunes for different moods, or just like to have background noises, but for my money, it has to be German Folk Metal.

How’s that for an intro? So why specifically German Folk Metal? The answer is… it doesn’t have to be, but that’s what mostly been on my rotation. In fact, most of the time, I’ve been listening to it at barely low volume to use as background. Because as I’ve talked about while recording audiobooks, when you have nothing in the background, every other sound gets amplified in your mind to the point of distraction.

I used to listen to EDM music while I wrote, specifically trance, for the very same reason I’m listening to YouTube clips of metal concerts from Germany. Because for writing music to be useful to me, it has to be catchy and preferably, without words. But wait, Marcus, metal music has words… yes, it does, but in a language I don’t understand! With that, my brain can tune out the rest and let me focus on writing things like this blog post. (Currently playing: Gojira from Hellfest 2019.)

As I’ve learned it doesn’t have to be specifically German; it can even be in English if it’s sufficiently quiet or is just yelled enough to be distorted. I’ve been listening to recorded concerts specifically because I can let them run for an hour and change and not have to worry about fixing the music.

The danger comes when I get too into this music I don’t understand. For example, keeping with the German Folk Metal subgenre, D’Artagnan is a band I’ve become a huge fan of. Yes, French musketeer theme, bagpipes and violins playing, music all in German. Feuerschwanz is also amazing. Also has violins, bagpipes, and German singing, but they have so much fun while playing. It really is happy metal… as bizarre a contradiction as that sounds.

However, playing concerts leads YouTube to offer other bizarre music. My favorite has been Electric Callboy, which is a electronica / metal combination which jumps between pop and death metal, and they have a lot of fun playing. It’s wonderful. Sometimes you get absolutely beautiful music like Harakiri for the Sky, a Viennese death metal band where the artists are incredibly talented, but their singer just yells everything to the point of distortion.

Whatever obscure thing I listen seems to get results. In fact, why don’t you read No Such Wizard, my recent novel. If you’re a dedicated Kindle user like I am, it’s only $0.99. Check it out. If you’re a cheapskate like me, I still want you to read it, but you can check it out on An Archive of Our Own (AO3) with simpler formatting, but the words are all the same. Then maybe you’ll be jamming to some obscure subgenre you’ve never heard of too.

Tags: German, metal, music, writing

Comments Leave a Comment
Categories My Books, Interests

The Hand That Feeds You Is So Tasty

6 Jul

“Never bite the hand that feeds you” is a wise and old saying. However, it’s easy to get caught in complacency, and taking your work for granted. You start a new job full of vigor and then get comfortable. After a while, you think, “Why ain’t I getting what my boss is getting?” That’s when you fall into the trap of biting back against your perceived slights.

Now you may ask yourself, what does the saying mean? Sometimes it’s as simple as complaining about your boss and co-workers. Or their bosses and other supervisors. This can cause a negative workplace culture. But you can also go into petty theft. After all, no one’s going to notice a stapler gone missing. Then maybe you take off early. Frequently. Like every Tuesday… because you can.

Now I’ve never done this… no, nay, never, but let’s just say this happened to a friend of mine. Once upon a time, my friend was a glorified secretary. He was productive, got his work done ahead of time, and was a good worker. However, he was a little too efficient. He had nothing to do by the end of the week. Then he noticed that because he worked with a lot of consultants, no one was there on Friday. He worked for several different bosses, so none of them knew where he was supposed to be at any given time. So he started leaving on Friday afternoons. After a year, he stopped showing up on Friday altogether.

Let’s take another friend of mine. She was a travelling consultant and one of the cool things about travelling for work is that you get reimbursed for your expenses, as long as you have receipts. Then after the second report, where she got rejected for several minor details, she had to pay out of pocket for things she did while on the job. So it didn’t take much to manipulate a screenshot of a receipt, change the numbers so they all looked correct, and no one was the wiser. Then she added more to that number than she actually spent; still under the limit, but way more than was purchased.

The most outrageous example was go-live week. When you work on a software project, my friend would say that all hands needed to be on deck for a couple weeks after it goes live, so that you can help the poor souls who have to use the software you developed. Except there was one project where there were too many people on deck; my friend was just standing there in a sea of support people and couldn’t do a thing to help. So he left. The boss was too busy to notice he wasn’t there so he spent the next week doing whatever he wanted, and got paid for it. The following week, instead of showing up for work, he spent the week in New Orleans… and got paid for it.

Now, are these good things? No. Was anyone harmed? No. However, they did exploit the system and cost the company money, even though they didn’t notice. Now my friends justified their moves by saying, “they’re making double what they pay me” or “they get paid the full limit for reimbursement whether I use it or not.” But these are just excuses. You are defrauding your employer and breaking their trust. On one hand, I can admire their audacity, on the other, I am appalled at their lack of insight. Because sooner or later, biting the hand that feeds you also bites you, even if no one catches you. It instills a bad behavior pattern that affects all parts of your life, not just work.

What do we owe our employer? But more importantly, what do we owe ourselves? These are issues that I certainly cover in my books, and I’d encourage you to read them. I’ve written in a variety of genres. The beauty of fiction is that it allows to explore issues that we may be too close to in order to appreciate the complexities that come with day-to-day life. It’s only when we see it through a friend’s eyes that we’re able to appreciate the morality behind it.

Tags: disappointment, morality, theft, work

Comments Leave a Comment
Categories My Life

“She’ll Tell You She’s An Orphan / After You Meet Her Family”

3 Jul

There are different ways to explore a character’s personality. My favorite is what the character drinks. Another way is the character’s family. Normally, in a story, you might run into their relatives once, and that helps advance the plot. However, when you’re writing the third in a series, and the parents keep coming back, you have to answer the question: who are these people?

In my first book, No Such Wizard, we run into Jack Crane’s family in Chapter 4. You meet his stoic father, his cold mother, and his rather nice brother… who’s been assigned to bust him and his illegal activities. Okay, that’s cool; Jack’s rejection by his parents turned him into the man he is. We keep running into his brother constantly throughout all three books, so the comparison between the wizard Jack was supposed to be (Val) and the no-maj that he actually became is obvious.

The brother was so much fun that Val Crane becomes a recurring, if not main, character. Val is the mirror in the wizarding world that Jack can only look into. They were both working “the case” from different perspectives, and as a result, he became important for advancing the plot. Then Val has to meet another of the main character’s (Claire) families in the sequel, No Such Squib. Suddenly I introduce the polar opposite of Val’s family and it’s a lot of fun. Not only was writing Claire’s family so much fun, but it shows you where did she get her personality from, her skills… it advances the plot and keeps things moving.

However, now in my third book, the outline points Jack back to seeing his family again, whom I never really expected to see again. I have to revisit the character of Jack and Val’s mom, Seraphima, who’s worried about her husband, Montague. Now as I joke, these two are about as warm and comforting as bricks. It’s a fun scene, Jack gets to feel twelve years old again, and the moment fades.

But then it keeps bugging me. Why are Montague and Seraphima married? Why are they still together? And how did they end up this way? Why their Monty and Sera married is because they were expected to. Whether that was because they met in school and recognized a kindred spirit or they met through many of the social functions that the wealthy wizarding families would have rotated through or whether their marriage was arranged doesn’t matter. The two of them married because it was the right thing to do.

Does that mean they don’t love each other? No. They do, but not in a way that we would recognize as romantic love. They stay together because they compliment each other; they also don’t ask each other for something the other can’t provide. Both of them grew up in a world of expectations and duty, and when they meet someone who’s able to respect what each other does, they hold on to that person.

I’ve got a lot more notes on their relationship, but I think that’s enough for one blog post. If you want to see these amazing characters I created, read No Such Wizard, my recent novel, I could publish it. If you’re a dedicated Kindle user like I am, it’s only $0.99. Check it out. If you’re a cheapskate like me, I still want you to read it, but you can check it out on An Archive of Our Own (AO3) with simpler formatting, but the words are all the same. Enjoy!

Tags: family, marriage, writing

Comments Leave a Comment
Categories My Books

To Be Heard, You Must Be Pleasing

2 Jul

I realized I didn’t know Spanish, which is a problem, when I’m suddenly having to read a ton of it. What is effortless to do while writing a story suddenly becomes a lot more difficult performing it. I’ve been recording an audiobook and as I’m speaking out the words I wrote, I realize that I created some obstacles I didn’t know that were there.

Neil Gaiman once wrote a script for a BBC series call Neverwhere; it’s one of my favorite TV shows. There was a mini-documentary on the making of the show, where he’s talking about filming a scene where in the script he wrote, it has the actor falling into the mud in a dark tunnel. He said it was one thing to write the scene, it’s another to be standing out in the cold, watching a person have to fall in the mud over and over again, and realize it’s your fault they’re doing this.

Then the lead actress, the very beautiful Laura Frasier, comes up to him on a take and says with joy in her eyes, “I can’t believe we’re getting paid to do this!” Then he didn’t feel so bad.

In a similar fashion, when I’m simply typing what my characters are doing, I’m not concerned that one of my main characters is a New Mexican Latino and likes to code-switch between Spanish and English. I think it adds flavor to the story… which it does, but when I’m recording the audiobook of my story, now I am the voice of that character. Oh, and he’s talking with three other people, all of which have to have a voice distinctive enough that the listener can tell them apart. Ay!

The voice issue is a concern; for the four main characters, that’s easy to keep in mind how they sound. Now I add secondary characters. Are we going to ever see/hear from these people again? Do I need to remember how this character is going to sound three chapters from now? I write little reminders on my yellow post-it note, but does “gruff older guy #1” really that distinct from “gruff older guy #2?”

Then there’s the scene I didn’t expect; my Latino character is having to whisper while talking to another gal who doesn’t over his earpiece. Whoops. So I’m having to record a stage whisper, at the same time, shifting to normal voice for the girl. I will tell you; I have a greater respect for voice actors now.

However, I have finished through Chapter 6 (out of 18), and have recorded about an hour an a half, so I’m feeling pretty good about my progress. In other writing news:

I did get both of my novels, No Such Wizard and No Such Squib up on Kindle.
Even though I’m using Amazon’s own template, I still can’t seem to figure out why their paperback system won’t accept it. “Where is the text bleed, Bezos?!”
As I mentioned, I am recording the audiobook, and I’m a third of the way through.
Which means, stuck with other obstacles, I finally crumbled, outlined, and started writing the third book, which I’m already on Chapter 5. I’m not ready to start putting it on AO3 yet, but I will once I get several chapters into it.

So I won’t say I’m back in the zone, but I’m feeling a lot better about my writing… making it feel more like a hobby, something I get to do rather than something I feel like I have to do. If you want to read the book I’m recording rather than waiting to hear it on Audible, if you’re a dedicated Kindle user like I am, it’s only $0.99. Check it out. If you’re a cheapskate like me, I still want you to read it, but you can check it out on An Archive of Our Own (AO3) with simpler formatting, but the words are all the same. Enjoy!

Tags: audiobook, books, recording, Spanish

Comments Leave a Comment
Categories My Books

“I’m Mad As Hell And I’m Not Going to Take It Anymore!”

1 Jul

When you work downtown, you get to see all of humanity, the good and the bad. You also get to hear every protest next to one of the city, county, and state buildings I work next to. You may feel you need your megaphone to be heard, and you are, but all anyone in the building hears is white noise.

So this morning, while I’m typing, some guy has decided that he’s mad about something. Most of the time, when someone uses a megaphone, it just comes out like Charlie Brown’s parents. “Wah-wa, w-wa-wah-wah.” Most of the time, the user has a chant going with it, so it’s rhythmic “Wa wa wa wa wa wa wah? Wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wah!” Today’s angry protestor is much clearer sounding… I still don’t know what he’s saying, but at least it’s sounding more ‘metal.’ Yeah, I could definitely put some sick bass back track to that.”

I’m not a guy who goes to protests. I can think of one I went to back… 16 years ago when I still lived in Cincinnati. We rallied in the downtown square then marched to City Hall to present a petition. I remember getting annoyed at the faces on the other side of the government doors. They were taking pictures of us, smirking, like what we were doing didn’t matter. I got seriously pissed off.

Now I’m on the other side of those doors and I understand. Oh, this is the fifth protest this month, and this one’s pretty good. When you hear protests all the time, it’s not that impressive. And as I mentioned, we’ve got decent sound muffling on these windows, so we can hear you… but we don’t understand what you’re upset about. Nor do we care. A couple weeks ago, there was a whole mariachi band going outside the City Council Building and they brought the funk. It is probably the gold standard of any protest I’ve seen before or since… but it’s the same problem that advertisers have. Sure, you remembered the ad, but the customer couldn’t tell you what they were advertising, it still didn’t work.

I remember once when I was in college where there was a wall of women walking down the street calling “Take back the night!” I had to cross in front of them in order to get back to my dorm, so I just played it cool, and the girls cheered. It was only after the protest that I found out what it was about; it was to show that women should be able to walk around after dark without fear of being hurt. I’m still not convinced that the issue is as widespread. Are there roaming men wandering around at 11 pm just waiting to ambush a single young woman? You’d think that would make the paper. So either it’s happening all the time, and it’s not newsworthy, or (as I’ve seen) women generally don’t go out by themselves at night.

Should they be able to? Absolutely. But they don’t because they’re afraid. Now I would argue that it’s a perception issue and that you’re probably pretty safe walking around your neighborhood at night as you would during the day, but then again, I’m a tall man of larger carriage, so I don’t fear much. I have nothing you want and I could probably hurt you back.

What’s the point? The point is that protests don’t make much of an impact unless the numbers are huge. And I mean huge, like hundreds of thousands huge. And the protest has to be about something specific. No just a vague “we don’t like Trump” kinda protest. The Black Lives Matter protests/riots worked because it was about something specific and had numbers involved. So if you need a megaphone, you’re probably doing it wrong.

This is where I normally pitch my books, but those are about actual revolutionaries, so you can read them in your own time. Meanwhile, I gotta crank the Finnish death metal louder.

Tags: noise, politics, protest

Comments Leave a Comment
Categories My Life

Why is that Cockroach Scuttling So Loudly?

30 Jun

You know when there’s a moment of silence, and inevitably, that’s when someone has a coughing fit? It’s only when it’s dead quiet that you discover that things around you are not as quiet as you believed. When you’re trying to record audio clips at your desk, suddenly every slight sound becomes a potential threat to your finished work.

I just recorded the first two chapters of my audiobook, No Such Wizard, and for someone who normally doesn’t notice background sounds (much to my bosses’ frustration), to have everything come in clear when my work was on the line was an interesting, and irritating, discovery. I started recording when my cubicle neighbor left to teach a class because I figured that I could have a nice quiet time to start getting this done.

Now this isn’t my first rodeo when it comes to audio production. I have a really nice microphone, I’ve got some great editing software, and I’ve done this many, many times for work-related projects. However, this is my personal project, so suddenly I find I care a lot more than I do when I’m muttering inanities like “For Fiscal Year 2026, 2027, the union agreed to allocate their funds towards…”

So as I was recording it, it wasn’t reading my words that was the problem, or coming up with separate voices that was the problem (although I’ll admit, I’m not great at that). It was every minor sound that came at me that I could only pray the microphone didn’t pick up.

What first annoyed me as the guy having a long conversation on the phone nearby. Now when I say “nearby,” that’s at least 100 feet from me. But in the quiet, suddenly someone talking at a normal volume piercing through the air. The better question is “Why the #*$& is it taking half-an-hour to explain something?!”

My phone ringing suddenly… that’s on me. I accept that and turn off the ringer. Our windows and thick concrete walls usually cut out the outside noise, but either today was the day for every truck in downtown Phoenix to suddenly rumble through… or I really just noticed it for the first time. The same with the airplanes; I know we’re next to the arrival pathway into Sky Harbor International, but My God, the booming seems to be louder. The polite ding of the light rail seems nice by comparison.

None of this noise terribly revealing to me, but when I’m suddenly recording, it’s like I’m hearing it for the first time. Wow; I’m hoping that the editing software can clear out any of that noise before anyone hears it. Yes, I could ask to use the voice recording box that has all the padding and whisper fan A/C thing, but I really didn’t think I would need it. I’m also not that confident that I’ll make dollar-one on this, so why go through the extra hassle? This is more for my edification than for success.

Hopefully, when I’m finished, you’ll be able to hear my nasally drone on Audible and I will have tried something new. If you’re impatient, I completely understand, and ask that you check out No Such Wizard, my recent novel. If you’re a dedicated Kindle user like I am, it’s only $0.99. Check it out. If you’re a cheapskate like me, I still want you to read it, but you can check it out on An Archive of Our Own (AO3) with simpler formatting, but the words are all the same. Enjoy!

Tags: audiobook, books, noise, recording

Comments 1 Comment
Categories My Books

Vacation Shouldn’t Freeze Summer

26 Jun

There’s a simple math; average vacation is 1 to 2 weeks. There’s some holidays where it’s natural for a plurality of people to take their vacation during it. That window of absent time is not that big. So why is it that work, community, hanging out with friends… everything seems to stop between Memorial and Labor Day?

This has been a problem that has perplexed me for a while and maybe its just my circles. You go to religious services, attendance is halved. You try to schedule something; “Sorry, I’ll be out for that week.” You try to advance a project at work, the crucial person is off. All these vacations are not staggered. I live in Arizona, so “getting outside more” during the summer makes zero sense. We hide inside our AC bubbles like lizards. So what is going on?

Answer #1: When the kids are away (from school), the family will play.

If you have a family, the natural time to take vacation is when the kids aren’t in school. Granted, but I know of no one who takes more than two weeks off unless they’re retired (and in which case, they don’t have kids). Having experienced this often, summer involved sending kids to activities, camps, friend hangouts. I can see having to take off a day or so here and there for these natural “daddy taxi” things, but you’re still working, right? The kids are somewhere doing something, right? That’s why I reject this answer.

Answer #2: The key people are the ones who are gone.

I like this theory better. When I was a travelling consultant and got pulled into a lot of meetings, I came up with a theory that every meeting was there to have a single person make a decision; everyone else was window dressing. During the summer, there’s a lot more opportunities for these key people to be on vacation. Especially since most projects I work on involve not only working with the SME (subject matter expert) until you’re happy with the final product, but then getting their supervisor… and then usually their supervisor to sign off on it. This takes forever in ordinary time, but now with key people being absent, might as well wait until Labor Day. And God forbid if Legal and Diversity have to get involved.

Answer #3: People are just busier in the summer.

This touches on the “better weather means more outdoor activities” theory, which works great for anywhere outside of the desert. This is where balancing kid activities comes in play. However, when I lived outside of Phoenix, this still didn’t make sense. It’s not like you’re going to the beach every day; maybe you’re going to the pool more often, but why would that impact normal daily activities?

Answer #4: You’re simply less willing to participate in the summer.

There might be a mental block. “It’s too hot, I don’t wanna go to church. Let’s just stay by the pool.” When the weather is better, you don’t to go out and do stuff. I can buy this a little better for things outside of work. But again, people want to get paid, right? I know how much vacation I get, and you can’t be getting that much more, but you just have money to spend your vacation on. Right?

Answer #5: Skeleton Crews

There may be simpler answer. Many of the teams I work with are already operating with the bare minimum number of people they need to operate. I’ve noticed that this year, one person decides to retire from a three-person team, suddenly my project with them is indefinitely postponed… because they’re now trying to cover another person’s work. So maybe if everyone is already at peak efficiency, having one or two people drop out for a week can stop everything in its tracks. Now alternate that missing person and you’ve effectively shut down for two months.

I like this answer for work but not for community activities. There are key people in any volunteer organization, but it’s not like “Gee, George isn’t showing up to church, so why bother?” I can see that for a club, because frequently there’s only two or three people actually doing the work, so having one of them drop out will make it impossible to function.

The problem with theories is that there is never one answer for the question. I can’t say that I’m bothered terribly much by the lack of action in the summer, but it’s one of those cause and effect things that I don’t have a good answer for. Maybe you should just find a shady spot and read a book. May I recommend No Such Wizard, my recent novel, I could publish it. If you’re a dedicated Kindle user like I am, it’s only $0.99. Check it out. If you’re a cheapskate like me, I still want you to read it, but you can check it out on An Archive of Our Own (AO3) with simpler formatting, but the words are all the same. Enjoy!

Tags: Summer, vacation, work

Comments Leave a Comment
Categories My Life

← Older Entries

Search