Why Would I Write

Author: goodnewsgeorge

  • The Shiny Disc

    I remember when Apple first announced that they would stop putting CD drives in their laptops. Back then I thought it was in idiotic thing to do – I was still a heavy disc user back then. Listening to music on CDs, watching movies on DVDs and burning files to CD-Rs. I was like, this was never going to fly, what are Apple thinking?

    Fast forward to this morning, there was someone in my office asking around if anybody had a CD player – she wanted to test a disc she had. Unfortunately for her, nobody had a drive. I looked around the room at everyone’s laptop – not a disc drive in sight. I thought that was pretty insane that nobody had one available for her to use. Then I started thinking about my own media habits and realized that I haven’t used discs in a very long time.

    At home, I have a PC with a disconnected drive. The drive is sitting there in my computer’s case, but it’s not plugged into the motherboard. Why? When I was building my PC many years ago, I made a conscious decision not to plug it in because I hadn’t used it in a long time.

    The DVD player at home is still hooked up to the TV cos my mom knows how to use it to watch movies, but these days she’s getting her shows over Astro anyway.

    I remember when I got my first DiscMan – I was so happy that I could finally listen to music without having to rewind cassettes. I could listen to songs on repeat conveniently (previously, I used to record blank tapes of my favorite song repeated so I didn’t have to rewind to binge on the same song). It was a game changer for me. Over the years I continually purchased CDs to expand my music collection. It was when MP3 players became affordable, it became a game changer.

    Now, I don’t even touch the CDs I own. The stacks of burnt CDs with music that I have sitting in my car? Untouched for years. These days I stream music from my phone via Bluetooth or I listen to it off a USB stick that’s perpetually plugged into the player.

    RIP optical discs. It was fun while it lasted.

  • World Building

    There’s a reason why I usually write fiction set in our world. I’m not very good at creating new worlds. Somehow I find the task of creating a new planet/city/location an extremely daunting task. I mean, it’s alright if it’s realistic fiction – you don’t have to establish anything. But when it comes to a make-believe world, you have to establish rules for everything. Even things that might not directly appear in your story need to be fleshed out. Like for example, we want monsters in a world. How did these monsters appear? Were they creatures from another planet? If yes, what brings them? Are they hostile/peaceful? How do the characters interact with them? What are their abilities? How do they look like? Do they drive the plot? Are they just sub characters? If the monsters were from the planet, how did they come about? Did they evolve naturally from other creatures? Have they just been there all along? Are they tamed? Do they speak? What do they do in the story?

    There’s a lot of things to think about – and that was just one example. In a complete story you’d probably have way more elements than that. The name of the city. Its layout. The people living in it. The political/economical situation. The period. The characters. The food. The vehicles. They all need an explanation. If not written down, you should at least have some rough guidelines for them in your head. Because every time something monster-related needs to be written, those questions probably need to be answered.

    When writing realistic fiction, you don’t have to do any of that. Maybe you explain your characters and the situation/place that they are in. There’s really not much else to do, you can just tell the story. People are already familiar with how human beings work. It’s not something that needs to be explained. Which is why I’ve been writing realistic fiction, or at least fiction set in established worlds. Also, it’s much easier to draw from real-life experiences if the setting is realistic. I can easily retell a story of my life in a character’s perspective without worrying if it would fit the world.

    World building is something I need to work on. I have trouble coming up with fictional settings and names for those places (I faced those challenges doing my two Nanowrimos). I need to read more and pay attention to how people write their worlds. I could pick up a lot of tips.

  • Words Per Minute

    Typing is such a fun activity. I remember when I was first introduced to a computer when I was a kid, I saw my uncle typing in commands in MS-DOS, and I thought it was such a ‘pro’ thing to do. So when I got my first computer, I was always booting up to play my games in MS-DOS mode even though they could run in Windows 95. I just preferred typing in commands in the console to run them – that was how much I enjoyed typing.

    Fast forward many years to a couple of years ago when I had to use my sister’s old laptop (because I didn’t have my own laptop) and installed Linux onto it, I had so much trouble using the command line (and Linux was all about the command line) because I couldn’t remember anything beyond the basic commands. Sure, the GUI was fully workable, but to make the most out of the operating system, you had to use commands. I was Googling how to do something different almost everyday. I was quite happy to switch to a Windows laptop after that.

    These days, unless I’m writing music (it’s quite a feat to write down lyrics with a guitar on your lap – much easier to put words on paper with a pen), I write with my keyboard. Like many things I enjoy, I’m not the best at it (gaming, music, drawing) but that doesn’t stop me from doing it. For some strange reason, it is satisfying to see characters appear on the screen each time you hit a key on your keyboard. Instant gratification. I guess the feeling of typing on a mechanical keyboard accentuates it as well.

    I’ve been spending a lot of time working on my typing speed recently by doing speed typing tests on Type Racer and Keybr. I have only hit 100 WPM once, but my average of 70 WPM is pretty good I guess. I probably need to type more (which I’ll do with my new job, starting next week yay) and eventually I’ll get faster.

    I don’t type correctly. I definitely don’t use the proper touch typing method – my pinkies don’t do a good job or picking up the slack, and I use my index fingers way too much. Not sure if I’ll be brave or bothered enough to learn a new layout like DVORAK (apparently you can form more words on the home row than with QWERTY) but as long as I type fast enough to be a qualified typist, that’s probably good enough for me.

    Maybe that’s why I enjoy playing Invoker. Casting combos quickly is as enjoyable as typing out a sentence quickly. With the added bonus of seeing enemies being blown up on your screen.

    Do I love typing more than writing itself? I guess there’s a chance that’s true. Then again I disliked taking minutes at my old job. I probably just enjoy typing what I’m interested in.