writing life

What I’m Reading Now: Two Fantasies and Particle Physics

“Two Fantasies and Particle Physics” is not the title of a real book, though it should be. You also shouldn’t listen to me because my titles suck.

I read this two months ago. A Biography of Cancer indeed!

I’ve put down 1600 usable words for ASIM, chapter 11. I’m looking forward to typing another 2000 words of John opening a werewolf treatment center in 221C and running the first international clinical trial for transfusion therapy. I giggle when I imagine John and Robert, both surgeons, grumbling about needing to dust off their oncology textbooks because they need a marker that shows the werewolf curse is gone-gone; something akin to the choriogonadotropin hormone levels (hcg) for choriocarcinoma, a cancer of the placenta.

You just never know what will inspire you when you write. The Emperor of All Maladies, case in point. I borrowed it two months ago and spent all my waking hours reading it for five days. Only now I connected choriocarcinoma with werewolf curses. It’s a beautifully written book, by the way. You shouldn’t let the subject or length stop you from reading it.  (more…)

By booksofchange, ago

Taking Care of the Mind Through Exercise: Does Strength Training Help?

In a previous post, I said I wanted to test if physical exercise improves my mind, hence writing. My tests are by no means scientific. For starters, the subject is only me. Also, I haven’t settled on what measures indicate “writing improved”. But in the meantime, I figured I could get my body ready for exercise.

The Challenges

Self-experiments like these, you have to do it for at least a year to gather good data. Or better, multiple years. That takes grit. Have I mentioned that I’m physically lazy and yearn to be a disembodied brain? I’m not unhealthy, but I’m no athlete. The only thing I’ve got going is my curiosity and need to test things.

To make things easier for me, I concentrated on two areas: cardio and strength. In plainer English: I ran and lifted barbells. Yes, I ignored flexibility, except to always stretch after a workout. For running, I did a lot of 5ks and 10ks. For strength, I chose the stronglifts  program because,

  1. focuses on increasing max strength
  2. involves only five exercises
  3. I can get away with doing only two workouts a week.

Today I’m going to talk about the strength training results:
(more…)

By booksofchange, ago

Contests, A Study In Magic and The Martian

Winning Writing Contests

My short story, Persistence of Frost and Memory, is a #wintercontest2016 winner! I’m so chuffed. Persistence is the first piece of original writing I’ve ever published for the Internet to see and ridicule.

It’s on the blog and Wattpad. Since Wattpad requires you to have an account, and the blog is not exactly the friendliest for reading chaptered stories, I’m looking into creating a kindle and/or epub file. At least, a PDF, as much I don’t like them. I’ve downloaded scrivener and will play around with it soon. (I like their 30 days of free use policy. It’s not based on the calendar days, in other words. The days I don’t use don’t count! Yay!)

Now speaking of writing… (more…)

By booksofchange, ago