Cephus' Corner

A Place for my Geeky Side

Time Marches On in Philately

December 7th, 2021

Relatively recently, I’ve come back to my first collecting love, stamps and I’ve noticed that every single time I’ve come back to it, and I do this every couple of years, I go looking for the nostalgia of a stamp newspaper of some sort.

Yet there’s really no way to go home again.

The Tale of a Book, Week 2

December 3rd, 2021

We’re back for another weekly wrap-up and things went very well this week. Overall, I got through about 33k words and nearly 120 pages and an awful lot of chapters. I’m not even sure how many because I didn’t pay attention to where I started. So far, I’m completely satisfied.

So let’s break it down.

Someone Please Direct Me!

December 2nd, 2021

Now that I’m back to collecting stamps, and having a great time doing it, naturally, I looked over on YouTube for some channels that might be entertaining to watch. While I did find some, and I know there won’t be a ton, I noticed one thing about the overwhelming majority of them.

They all seem to be aimed at the uninitiated stamp collector.

Writer Flow State

November 27th, 2021

This is one question that I get all the time, especially when I start talking about how productive I can get. What’s really going on here, as any productive author will tell you, is that I’m getting into a flow state where I can write for a long period of time and just pour my words onto the page without having to screech to a halt and think about it.

In my opinion, it’s really what writers ought to be trying to train themselves to do. So here are some details, at least in my case.

The Tale of a Book, Week 0

November 21st, 2021

I had a couple of people ask, even after I did my “day in the life” post, exactly how books shake out, given my quick turnaround schedule so I’m going to toss this out there, both because I think it might be interesting and because I hope it might help people. So, for this book, the last book of the year for me, I’m going to do a weekly check-in to show what I’ve done. This is more of an introduction because I’m scheduled to start writing on Monday, November 22, 2021.

So let’s see where we stand.

When Did YouTube Woodworkers Stop Doing Woodworking?

November 19th, 2021

Okay, stop me if you’ve heard this before but it seems like the vast majority of YouTube woodworking channels have entirely stopped doing woodworking. At least, that’s true of all of the ones that I watched. Now, it’s on to home improvement projects, metalworking and the like and I’m just sitting here wondering what the hell happened?

So would someone please explain?

Why Do Franchises Run Out of Steam?

November 17th, 2021

I’ve noticed this a lot lately and in discussions with people, it’s become pretty clear that movie franchises, they tend to completely fall apart by the time that the series gets to 3-4 movies. Some don’t even make it that far.

So why is that? Why do so many of the most popular intellectual properties completely crap out so fast? Let’s take a look.

A Day in the Life

October 28th, 2021

Now I know that I’ve been complaining a lot recently about the poor state of the amateur writer and while that’s certainly valid, after all, if the goal is to help people to become better writers, correcting their misconceptions and pointing out their foibles is essential, but I wanted to do something a bit more positive today.

So this is how I write a book and where I’m at right now. Hope it helps.