A Fresh Start on a New Blog

Hello, friends!

I have some happy news and some sad news.  Let’s get the sad news out of the way first.  This will be my last post here on Planet Pailly.  I’ve been blogging here for the last fourteen years.  In fact, I started this blog shortly after a nasty break up, at a time when a lot of things were changing in my life.  Writing Planet Pailly helped me get a fresh start when I needed it most.

Which brings me to the happy news: I’m starting a new blog.  The past few years have brought me a lot of pain and hardship.  But that’s over now.  I can let it go.  I’m ready to move on, and I’m ready for another fresh start.  I debated long and hard whether my latest fresh start really needed to involve the creation of a fresh, new blog.  There’s a good argument to be made for sticking with the blog I already have.

However, in the end, the deciding factor was that I discovered a web address that I really like, a web address that (to my absolute astonishment) nobody had taken.  So I jumped on it.  And now, going forward, I’ll be doing all my blogging on my new website.

What sort of content can you expect to see on the new website?  Well, it won’t be that different.  My art style isn’t changing.  My writing style isn’t changing, either.  But I hope you’ll see my renewed enthusiasm for writing, for blogging, and (most of all) for space.  Because I love space.  My heart overflows with my love for space!  And all I want to do now is share that love with you, dear readers.

So thank you, friends, for following me all these years here on Planet Pailly, and I hope you’ll join me for my next blogging journey over on I Love Space (web address: i-love-space.com).  There’s not a whole lot to see there at the moment, but I promise my first I Love Space blog post is coming soon, and I’ll have even more exciting space-related news to share shortly thereafter.

What Color was the Eclipse?

Hello, friends!  I have recently returned from a trip to see the 2024 solar eclipse (my first total solar eclipse!).  I was traveling with a couple of friends.  Due to weather-related concerns, we dropped our original plan to watch the eclipse in Buffalo, New York, and instead drove to a small town called Port Burwell, situated on the Canadian side of Lake Erie.

On the day of the eclipse, Port Burwell was the only place within hundreds of miles with a sunny forecast.  Everywhere else was supposed to be cloudy or partly cloudy.  Port Burwell’s forecast was sunny.  We were not the only ones to realize this, and so we ended up being part of an enormous mob of people who descended upon this cute, lakeside town–a town that was very obviously not expecting so many people to show up.  The locals were super nice, super welcoming, but also, very obviously, very surprised.

I wound up watching the eclipse from a concrete pier, with a cold (increasingly cold, once the event began) wind blowing on me from the lake.  There have been only a few moments in my life where I felt like I’d been transported, body and soul, into another world: exploring the ancient cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde, seeing the bacterial mats at Yellowstone National Park, and standing on that pier in Port Burwell while the last light of the Sun flashed and vanished behind the Moon.

What happened next?  Speaking as a writer, as a man of words, as a person who owns an absurd number of dictionaries and thesauruses, please understand what I mean when I say I have NO WORDS to describe the next three minutes.  Strange?  Beautiful?  Terrifying, on some deep and primal level?  Those words point in the general direction of what this experience felt like.  And that’s the best I, as a writer, can offer.  Sorry.  Words fail me.

Although, there is one more word I would use to try to communicate what my eclipse experience was like.  It’s the name of a color.  Magenta.  As it so happens, the 2024 eclipse occurred during solar maximum, the most active part of the Sun’s eleven year cycle.  Several solar prominences (those giant, fiery arcs that rise up from the Sun’s surface) were visible to the naked eye during the eclipse.  One extremely bright prominence appeared near the “bottom” of the Sun, and I saw two other large, flickering prominences on the Sun’s righthand side.

To my eye, the prominences were the most perfect magenta color I have ever seen in nature.  It was like the pure magenta that computers generate in a CMYK color pallet.  The next day, I decided to try drawing the eclipse based solely on my own memory (see the image above).  Memory is an imperfect thing.  In my drawing, it seems that I made the bottom and righthand prominences bigger than they really were (probably because those three prominences stand out so prominently in my memory).  But the color is about right.  That color is, I swear to you, the color that I saw.  Which is strange, because my best friend, who was standing right next to me at the time and who was definitely seeing the same eclipse I was, swears the prominences were bright, bright red.  Not magenta.  Red.

After I drew my version of the eclipse, my friend used color correction software to try to approximate the color he saw.  He tells me his version is still not quite right, but it’s close enough.  So here’s the side-by-side comparison:

After comparing notes with a few other people who also saw the eclipse, it seems that most people (but not everyone) saw what my friend saw: a bright red color.  One person went so far as to call it an orangey-red color.  Only a few people saw the same magenta color I saw.

There’s so much about the eclipse that I did not expect, but this red vs. magenta thing is the part I expected the least.  So I want to end this post by asking you, dear readers: did you see the eclipse?  And if you did, what color were the solar prominences?  Did they look red to you?  Did they look magenta?  Did you, perhaps, see a different color entirely?

#IWSG: Dreams vs. Passions

I’ve known people who chased a dream and made themselves miserable in the process.  When they finally gave up on that dream, it was a relief—both for them and for all the people in their lives who loved them.  I sometimes wonder if I should follow their example.  On rough writing days (or rough writing weeks, months, years…), I sometimes wonder if I ought to give up on my writing dreams.

Except writing is not a dream for me.  It’s a passion.  Let me explain.  For the purposes of this blog post, I’m going to define a dream as an end goal that you really, really want.  As an example, I really, really want to go to space.  I think that would be an amazing experience!  But I’ve read enough astronaut autobiographies to know that I do not want to do all the hard work it takes to get myself to space.  Chasing that dream would make me absolutely miserable (miserable enough that I’d probably fail the psych tests and be disqualified from spaceflight, anyway).

But writing?  Writing is a passion.  What I mean by that is that I am excited about the work itself, not the end goal.  Getting my stories published would be nice.  Winning lots of awards and making lots of money would be cool.  Knowing that complete strangers are reading and enjoying my work would be great!  But none of that motivates me to sit down and do my writing day after day.  The process of putting words down on paper—that, in and of itself, makes me happy.  Even if I never get published, even if no one ever reads my stories, even if I never get any recognition or accolades at all… I still want to do my writing.

Dreams still matter.  They tell you something about who you are.  My dream of going to space gives me a pretty big hint as to what I should write about.  But it is absolutely okay to give up on a dream.  Just don’t give up on your passions.

Today’s post is part of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Janet Alcorn, T. Powell Coltrin, Natalie Aguirre, and Pat Garcia.  If you’re a writer and if you feel insecure about your writing life, click here to learn more about this amazingly supportive group and to see a list of participating blogs.

#IWSG: In Defense of Escapism

Hello, friends!

I’ve been told by several people that I should read The Handmaid’s Tale.  I love science fiction.  The Handmaid’s Tale is science fiction, and it’s really good science fiction—the kind of science fiction that may pretend to be about the future, but it’s really talking about the world we live in today.  All of that, I’m sure, is true, but I’m not going to read The Handmaid’s Tale.  Not any time soon, at least.  Based on everything I’ve read and heard about it, it sounds to me like that book is just too real right now.

“Escapism” is a dirty word, at least to some people.  And I have to admit: if you dive too deep down that rabbit hole, if you spend too much time hiding within a fictional world, if you avoid dealing with the realities of life for too long… yeah, that’s not healthy.  But dealing with reality can be a lot.  It’s okay to take breaks.  It’s okay to escape into a fantasy world for a little while.  Sometimes, that’s what people need.

For those of you who don’t know this about me, I cannot avoid watching the news.  I work in the news business.  That’s my day job.  And I am proud of the work I do.  There are things the public needs to know, that the public deserves to know, and I help make sure the public has access to that information.  But as you might imagine, working in news can be depressing (especially these last few years).  So when I have time to read or time to write, I really just need a break from reality.  Not a reminder.  A break.

None of this is to say that The Handmaid’s Tale is a bad book.  I mean, even if it is a bad book, how would I know?  I’ve never read it!  My point is that all books have their value—the serious books and the unserious books alike.  There ought to be no shame in reading (or writing) what some might label as “escapist fiction.”

A sappy, trashy romance?  A convoluted who-done-it murder mystery?  A pew-pew laser gun Sci-Fi adventure (with dinosaurs)?  Somebody out there really needs a book like that right now.  So if you’re inclined to write anything along those lines, go write it.  You’ll be making life a little bit better for someone.

The Insecure Writer’s Support Group is a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Kristina Kelly, Miffie Seideman, Jean Davis, and Liza @ Middle Passages.  If you’re a writer and if you feel in any way insecure about your writing life, click here to learn more about this awesomely supportive group and to see a list of participating blogs!

#IWSG: When Two Roads Diverge…

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.  This month, I am still slowly getting back into the rhythm of writing.  It’s happening more slowly than I expected and more slowly than I would have wanted, but it is still happening.  And right now, all of my writing related thoughts can be summed up in a single word: choice.

Not the creative choices I make as a writer, but rather the choices my characters have to make.  The choices I am forcing them to make.  The kind of choices that my characters would, quite honestly, prefer not to make at all, if they could help it.

I’ve read many stories where characters have to choose between two things, but the two things are not really equal.  Like, Mr. McHero must choose between spending time with his children or saving the world from a nuclear holocaust.  I mean… yes, it sucks that Mr. McHero doesn’t get to spend more time with his kids, but if there’s a nuclear holocaust, he won’t get to spend much time with his kids anyway.  There isn’t a real choice here.  If Mr. McHero is the only person who can stop the nuclear holocaust from happening, he needs to go do that.

I’ve also read stories where story events make a difficult choice become an easy choice.  For example, Sally Romance has to choose between two equally attractive male suitors.  But then it turns out that one of those suitors murdered Sally’s grandfather, and he’s only interested in marrying Sally because he’s after the inheritance money.  So who will Sally choose?  There isn’t a real choice to be made anymore!

Stories like Sally Romance’s story or Mr. McHero’s story can be fun and interesting in their own ways, but that’s not the direction I want to go with the story I’m currently writing.  My protagonist is in a bit of trouble.  He doesn’t want to admit that he’s in trouble, but it’s true.  Sooner or later, my protagonist is going to have to make a decision.  Whatever decision my protagonist makes, it will have consequences, and he’d really rather not think about that.  He’d rather pretend the problem isn’t there.  Or, if he must make a decision, he’d like it if somebody or something would intervene and make the decision easy.

As the author, I will not make this decision easy for my protagonist.  I hate to see my protagonist suffer.  I hate to prolong his suffering.  But I will allow my protagonist’s decision making process drag out for the entire length of the book, because that is what’s right for this book.

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The Insecure Writer’s Support Group is a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Janet Alcorn, SE White, Victoria Marie Lees, and Cathrina Constantine.  If you’re a writer and if you feel in any way insecure about your writing life, click here to learn more about this awesomely supportive group and to see a list of participating blogs!

What Color is Neptune?

Hello, friends!

Every now and then, science asks us to unlearn a thing we had previously learned.  Pluto isn’t a planet.  Some dinosaurs were covered in feathers.  And now, according to some newly published research, Neptune is less blue than we thought.  Rather than that rich, royal blue color we usually see in photos, Neptune is more of a light aqua color, similar to the light aqua of Uranus.

The original research, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, was actually more about Uranus than Neptune.  As you probably know already, Uranus is tipped over sideways.  This sideways orientation causes some pretty wild seasonal variations in Uranus’s atmosphere, which leads to changes in Uranus’s color and brightness over the course of a Uranian year (which is equivalent to approximately 84 Earth years).

But aside from the sideways thing, Uranus and Neptune are very similar planets.  They’re about the same size, about the same mass, and they have almost the same chemical compositions.  So if you’re doing research about the atmosphere of Uranus (and the color thereof), then it makes sense to compare and contrast the colors of Uranus and Neptune.  And it’s at this point that the original research paper goes off on a long tangent, explaining that Neptune isn’t as blue as you probably think, and offering reprocessed imaging data to show what Neptune really looks like.

So how did everybody get this wrong for so long?  Well, to make a long story short, somebody at NASA was playing with the color contract.  In 1989, when the Voyager 2 space probe sent the first up close images of Neptune back to Earth, those images revealed some interesting features in Neptune’s atmosphere, like the Great Dark Spot and the South Polar Wave.  Adjusting the color contrast made those features easier to see, and so these color adjusted images were the images that got disseminated to the media and the public.

In NASA’s defense, they did try to call attention to the color adjustments they’d made.  The color enhanced photos originally had captions explaining that they were false color images.  Apparently NASA also showed a true color image of Neptune, side by side with the false color version, at a 1989 press conference.  Still, most people missed the memo, including a lot of people in the scientific community, leading to this popular misconception that Uranus and Neptune are dramatically different shades of blue.

Now I have seen a few amateur astronomy buffs object to this new research, saying that when they look at Neptune and Uranus in their telescopes, Neptune is clearly a darker shade of blue than Uranus.  The research paper does address that.  First, due to differences in atmospheric density, Neptune is a teeny-tiny bit darker than Uranus (but only a teeny-tiny bit).  Additionally, Neptune is farther away from the Sun, which means Neptune gets less sunlight than Uranus.  This makes Neptune look a teeny bit darker still. And also, if you’re observing Neptune from Earth, Neptune will appear to be smaller (and proportionally dimmer) than Uranus, once again due to the fact that Neptune is farther away.

It’s going to take me some time to get used to this, just like it took me some time to get used to the idea of feathered dinosaurs.  I sometimes like to call Uranus “the Turquoise Planet” and Neptune “the Other Blue Planet.”  But I guess I’ll have to change that.  From now on, I’ll have to call Neptune “the Other Turquoise Planet” instead.

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

I don’t normally tell people to just go look at Wikipedia, but I do think the Wikipedia page on Neptune is worth seeing.  Wikipedia was very quick to update its photo of Neptune after this new research was published.

The lead author on the original paper is a professor at the University of Oxford, so here’s the press release from the University of Oxford announcing the paper’s publication.

And here’s a YouTube video with a little more detailed information about Uranus, Uranus’s atmosphere and seasonal variations, and the updated color data for Neptune.

And lastly, for anyone who wants to read the original research paper itself, here’s the link.

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P.S.: If you must make a Uranus joke in the comments, I will give you praise and credit if (and only if) it’s a joke I haven’t heard before.

Fly or Die: How Life on Venus Might Survive

Hello, friends!

So I recently found this 100% totally legit JWST image of Venus, revealing some of the weird and scary chemistry that happens in Venus’s atmosphere.  As you can see, Venus sure does love chemicals.  Super noxious, super toxic chemicals.  With all those noxious and toxic chemicals in her atmosphere, you’d think Venus must be a pretty unlikely place to find life.

Now add in a runaway greenhouse effect that makes the surface of Venus hotter than the daytime surface of Mercury.  Now add in atmospheric pressure that rivals the deepest, most-submarine-crushing depths of Earth’s oceans.  Now add in some sort of volcanic activity (the specifics of which remain mysterious) that seems to sporadically spread fresh lava over nearly the entire planet’s surface.

So yes, Venus is an unlikely place to find life.  Venus is among the least likely places in the whole Solar System to find life.  And yet, the possibility of life on Venus does come up in the scientific literature from time to time.  So how would that work?  How could living things survive on a planet so infamously hostile to life?

Have you ever heard the expression “sink or swim”?  Well, if any sort of life exists on Venus today, its motto must be “fly or die.”  Everything about Venus is dangerous and deadly, but the most dangerous and deadly conditions are found at the planet’s surface.  So if you’re a Venusian life form, don’t go to the surface.  Stay aloft in the atmosphere.  At an altitude of about 55 kilometers up, you should be safe safe-ish.  The global lava floods (however frequently or infrequently that happens) will be far below you.  The extreme pressure and temperature will be far below you as well.  You’ll still have to deal with all those scary chemicals in the atmosphere, but if you’re clever (or rather, if evolution is clever for you) some of those scary chemicals might be usable to you as nutrients.

If the idea of perpetually airborne life—of life that never, ever touches the ground—seems farfetched, then I need to tell you that microorganisms can and do live in the upper reaches of Earth’s atmosphere.  That’s not an ideal environment for them.  They’d much rather be down on the ground, where water and nutrients are more plentiful.  But microbes can survive way up there, if they have to.  Earth has a whole “aero-biosphere” of airborne microbes that scientists are only just beginning to understand.

And if Earth has an aero-biosphere, then maybe (maybe!) Venus could have some sort of aero-biosphere, too.  It may not be likely, but it’s not totally impossible.

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

Here’s a link to diagram, originally from a paper on the possible habitability of Venus, showing what the life cycle of Venusian airborne microbes might be like.

And here’s a short press release from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (A.P.L.) describing the so-called “Venus Life Equation,” which is sort of like the Drake Equation for life in the universe, but for just Venus.

And lastly, regarding the mystery surrounding Venus’s volcanic activity, we know Venus’s surface got “paved over” by fresh lava at some point in the recent past, but we don’t know how frequently this sort of thing happens.  It definitely happened at least one time.  Maybe it’s happened more often than that, or maybe it’s a continuing process that’s still happening today.  Here’s an article from the Planetary Society explaining why the global resurfacing of Venus remains such a big scientific mystery.

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P.S.: Okay, I lied.  The image I used at the top of this blog post?  That’s not really from JWST.  Actually, I’m pretty sure JWST cannot safely observe Venus, due to Venus’s proximity to the Sun.  I drew that image myself.  And if you like my drawing of Venus, and if you want to do something to support what I do here on Planet Pailly, please consider visiting the Planet Pailly store on RedBubble.  There, you can buy my “Venus ‘Hearts’ Chemicals” drawing (and other drawings I’ve done) on a T-shirt, pillow case, spiral-bound notebook… personally, I think today’s drawing would look great on a little notebook, maybe for chemistry class!

Green Skies on Mars

Hello, friends!  So I learned a new thing about Mars.  Recent research, published just last year in Nature Astronomy, says that the nighttime sky on Mars sometimes glows green.  Super bright green.  Bright enough that this green glow would be visible to the human eye, if any human eyes were on Mars to see it.  According to one source I read, this green Martian airglow would be comparable to “moonlit clouds on Earth.”

So how does this happen?  Chemistry!  During the day, sunlight zaps carbon dioxide (CO₂) gas in Mars’s atmosphere, breaking it up into ionized carbon and oxygen atoms.  At night, those ionized oxygen atoms recombine to form molecular oxygen (O₂).  This specific reaction—the formation of O₂—produces a little light in the green and infrared parts of the spectrum.  (Please note: I have glossed over an enormous amount of detail here.  See the “Want to learn more?” section below for more information).

The infrared glow of O₂ formation had been detected previously.  A very faint green glow had also been detected over the dayside of Mars.  The detection of a green glow at night—that is the new discovery!  And also, this green glow is remarkably and astonishingly bright.  Brighter, it seems, than anyone expected.

Which initially made me wonder: if this green airglow on Mars is that bright, how did it go undetected for so long?  But then again, I sometimes overestimate how much we know about Mars.  You’d think we’d know a lot by now.  Mars is the second most thoroughly explored planet in the Solar System, after Earth.  But in truth, we have just barely scratched the Red Planet’s red surface (and we know even less about all the other planets in our Solar System).

So I see this discovery as a reminder: no matter how much we think we know about space, there is still far, far more we need to learn.

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

This discovery was made by the European Space Agency’s ExoMars Mission, currently in orbit around Mars.  Here is a press release from ESA about this discovery.

And here is an article from Universe Today, which goes into more detail about Mars’s airglow, the chemistry behind it, and the way Martian wind patterns and the changing of Martian seasons affect it.

And lastly, for those of you who want to look at the original research, here’s a link to the original research paper from Nature Astronomy (warning: you may encounter a paywall).

#IWSG: One Thing at a Time

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Joylene Nowell Butler, Olga Godim, Diedre Knight, and Natalie Aguirre.  If you’re a writer and if you feel insecure about your writing life, click here to learn more about this awesomely supportive group!

I felt unsatisfied by my writing last year.  I haven’t felt properly satisfied in my writing life for several years now.  There were extenuating circumstances.  One personal disaster after another.  Finding time to write was difficult.  But 2024 will be different.  That’s more than a vain hope; I have good reason to believe that this year will, in fact, be different, and so I feel confident in making the following New Year’s resolution: I resolve to get back to writing—to get back to writing like I used to write!

To do that, there are some old writing lessons that I need to relearn.  The first problem I’ve encountered is the temptation of info-dumping.  I’m sure we’ve all come across books like the book pictured below, especially those of us who read fantasy and science fiction.

As a Sci-Fi writer, I’ve developed a vast and complicated new universe for my fiction.  This vast and complicated new universe includes new science, new technology, new political institutions, new economic systems, new environmental hazards, new cultural norms, new fashions of clothes, new styles of art and literature and music—and it really seems like I ought to explain all these new things to my readers before I can expect them to understand what’s going to happen in my story… right?

But I don’t.  I have to keep reminding myself that I don’t have to explain everything up front.  The Hobbit didn’t explain everything up front.  Neither did Dune, and neither did the first Star Wars movie.  Next time you watch Star Wars: A New Hope, take note of how long the movie waits to tell you about the Jedi and the Force.

So as I try to get back to writing like I used to, I’m setting a new rule for myself: explain only one thing at a time.  Just one thing.  Yes, there’s a vast and complicated universe out there that my readers will need to learn about eventually.  But all of that can wait.  The socio-political stuff can wait.  The extraterrestrial biology stuff can wait.  The fashion choices of the future can wait.

Right now, in whatever scene I’m currently writing, I’m only allowed to explain one thing to my readers.  Just one thing.  So what will it be?  What is the one thing—the one and only thing—that my readers need to know about at this point in the story?  Asking myself that question will, hopefully, stop me from info-dumping for 400 pages before my story even begins.

P.S.: It’s the sigma oscillation device.  In the scene I’m currently writing, the one thing I need to explain to my readers is what the heck a sigma oscillation device is.

#IWSG: Illogical Tactics

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by C. Lee McKenzie, JQ Rose, Jennifer Lane, and Jacqui Murray.  If you’re a writer and if you feel insecure about your writing life, click here to learn more about this wonderfully supportive group.

If you know anything about me, you know I love a good Star Trek quote.  This year, Star Trek: Lower Decks delivered one of my new, all time favorites: “Illogical tactics can sometimes lead to logical solutions.”  As a Trekkie, I’m delighted by how Vulcan and simultaneously un-Vulcan that statement is.  But as a writer, I’m even more delighted by that quote because it sums up a core truth of writing, a truth that I have struggled for years to put into words.

Whether it’s a novel or a short story or a quick blog post, there is always a certain logic to any finished piece of writing.  There’s the logic of grammar.  There’s the logic of pace and rhythm.  There’s the logic of an argument being made in an essay (or a blog post), and there’s the logic of plot, setting, characterization, etc. in any work of fiction.  Yes, there’s always some sort of logic to a written work, but the process of creating that written work may involve a great deal of illogical tactics.

One of my favorite cures for writer’s block is alphabet soup.  Literally, I eat a bowl of alphabet soup.  Something about shoveling spoonfuls of letters into my mouth makes me feel like I’m replenishing my writing ability.  Logically speaking, this shouldn’t work.  But it does.

I changed my hair color this year.  I have blue hair now (or green hair, depending on the light).  Why did I do this?  I don’t know.  It’s something I always wanted to do, but until this year I wasn’t brave enough to actually do it.  I did not expect that to help me with my writing, but somehow it did.  Maybe being brave enough to experiment with my hair color made me brave enough to experiment more in my writing.  Or maybe this has helped me tap into some deep inner truth about myself.  As my muse said when I first got my hair done: “It was always blue on the inside.”  Or maybe I just like my new hair.  Maybe just doing something that makes me happy leads to happier, more productive writing sessions.  I don’t know why it helped.  I just know that it did.

I mentioned my muse.  I talk to her regularly.  Every day, in fact.  Multiple times a day.  We talk about writing, and we talk about things that are not writing.  I try to pretend that she is a real flesh and blood person, and as much as possible, I treat her accordingly.  Is that weird?  Yes.  Even my muse thinks it’s a little weird sometimes.

The important thing is it works.  When I talk to my muse regularly, she gives me good writing advice (and sometimes she gives me good advice about other things, too).

A written work is a logical work.  A written work must, by necessity, have a certain logic to it.  But the process of creating a written work is chaotic, messy, and strange.  The process is not always logical.  It may involve all sorts of weird and wacky tricks, peculiar superstitions, and quirky secret techniques (for example, the technique I used to write this blog post… it was weird, it was quirky, and it is my little secret—I’ll never tell!).  Whatever works works.

So friends, what are some of the illogical tactics you use in your writing process?