Personal Log: Rick Clogston

Do you want to know why I like Frontier Fleet?

Whaddaya mean, no? Aw, c'mon, indulge me here! If you don't, I'll write a love scene between X'ok and your character.

There, I knew you wanted to know. I like it because this gets me back to writing fiction. I hadn't done that in a long time. In spite of the fact that I've never really done it for money, I consider myself a writer. But, I also consider myself a performer.

Y'see, I'm a musician. Guitar. Have been for over hmmmbzzz years. And, I like a lot of different kinds of music. I'm not particularly fond of hip-hop and all its offshoots. And, I never got into disco. And, I can only take so much opera. Just about everything else, I'm down with. I don't even care if it has guitar in it.

The thing is, as many different kinds of music as I like, and play, I derive the most satisfaction out of playing music that I wrote myself. Not to say that I'm some musical genius or something, but nothing says "me" like I do.

Writing fiction, on the other hand, takes me out of myself and allows me to be somebody else. It's kind of like being an actor, but I get to write my own lines.

I am fascinated with the mechanics of performance. I actually like practicing on the guitar, for instance. When I have time, and am able to concentrate, I love dissecting a piece of music, or just a scale or chord, and seeing what can be done with it. I love watching a TV show like "From The Actor's Studio" on Bravo, and hearing accomplished actors talking about how they do what they do. Acting is much more than just pretending to be a character, just like playing music is much more than getting the notes right.

The problem with being an actor (I studied theater for a while in my younger days) is that somebody else writes your part, and somebody else gets to choose which part you will play. IF you hang in there, and are very good, and impress the right people, you get better and better parts to play. If not, you spend your life being in ketchup commercials or screaming "No, don't!" on a soap opera.

When you write fiction, you get to act out the scene in your mind. You get to be that person. You get to do things that you wouldn't dream of doing yourself. Plus, you get to play characters you can't even possibly act in real life. In writing fiction, if I decide I want to be a 19-year-old five-foot-four flamboyantly gay psychopathic murderer, it's as close as my keyboard.

In a nutshell, I'm having fun with X'ok and the people he hangs out with. I'm concentrating on him for now. I may create other characters later, but I want to see what I can do with him first. I'm in the middle of composing his Rite Of Ascension, with a Vulcan twist. And, of course, no piece of creative writing is complete without feedback, so feel free to tell me it's complete tripe. Hell, I didn't quit my day job to do this. Go ahead, slash it up.

And, of course, I am also interested in your thoughts on what you do. What sort of things are you seeking to accomplish here? Are you using FF as an escape from your regular routine, or are you honing your craft? As I've said before, I've seen plenty of really good writing here. Some of it is pretty raw, but there are no end of the stories, and without a story, you have nothing to say. How much of yourself is there in your character? How much of the self you wish you could be? What does your character do that you wish you dared to? Are you interested in the characters you interact with, and the people who write them, or are the rest of us here to help you express yourself?

Just some random thoughts and observations on being a member of Frontier Fleet.

First, there would seem to be certain things that one must be to be here.
A trek fan.
A writer, or at least someone who's interested in writing.
Creative, in general. There seem to be a lot of musicians, or at least people who are interested in quite a wide variety of music.

It also seems that most FF folk are into just about everything Sci-Fi. In this, I lag behind the rest. I've checked out Stargate, Babylon 5, and many others, and they don't do much for me. I'm into Trek, Star Wars, Farscape, and have read quite a bit that most of you would probably consider old stuff. Frank Herbert, Anne McCaffrey, David Eddings, and so on. I also like a lot of stuff that isn't even remotely Sci-Fi. I just like quality, in pretty much any form.

One reason I like FF is that I am somewhat a student of the craft of writing. I write poetry, music, fiction of various types, and used to be a journalist. I've never made any real money doing any of them, but I enjoy them just the same. If anything, doing these things for free gives me the freedom to follow my muse with no inhibitions. Just let my freak flag flap in the breeze, and make it to my day job on time.

Here comes the minutiae part. I have noticed some stylistic differences in the posts that I'm curious about. I should point out that I learned typing back in the days of automatic-printout mechanical word processors. Or, manual typewriters, to you history buffs. I learned a system called Touch-Typing, back when we put a sheet of paper in a machine, touched a button, and a letter appeared that could not be erased without considerable labor.

Anyway, there were certain things we were taught to do that have become habit for me. Like, for instance, the practice of always leaving two spaces after a period or other sentence-ending punctuation. Thusly. Not one, like this. Sorry. I notice things like that. Also, we of this school put spaces between the dots . . . when leaving a pause...in the middle of a sentence.

Now, please understand, this is not meant as criticism, but merely observation. One shared out of curiosity. I understand that most of you out there are Europeans, and a generation younger than myself. I am wondering if it is common to learn a system of typing nowadays, or if you all just learned by what my old teachers used to call the search-and-destroy method. When you sit down at the keyboard, do you put the fingers of your left hand on asdf, and of your right on jkl;?

If I might be so bold, I think that doing things like leaving those extra spaces makes a post easier to read. It's easier to find the breaks between sentences, and where things in quotes begin and end. "Like if your character were saying something, then thinking something, then talking again." When I respond to posts, I edit what I get in this manner to make it easier to follow. But, again, that's my opinion only.

One other observation I would like to make is that it has been my privilege to read some truly excellent writing. I'm not going to name names here, not at this time anyway, but I think you know who you are. I would also be curious to know who among the FF crowd writes for a living.

One favor I would like to ask anyone who is interested. Feel free to contact me with construcive criticism. I appreciate it, and usually act on it, and am most interested in the story coming together well. I have been known to do this with a few of you, and again, you know who you are. In a nutshell, if I suck, I want to stop. Help me. After all, as we say in my band, the song is the boss.

Well, that's enough of this, uh, stuff for now. Back to life. Of course, re-read and edit before posting.

Boy, what a long, strange trip this is! I am barely computer literate, and I sure hope this works. I've been puttering around with this blasted glass-paged typewriter until I've gotten here. Maybe you will be reading this soon. Maybe you are now.

It would seem that I might just be the oldest person in Frontier Fleet. I can remember watching Star Trek when it was in prime time on NBC, right after Hollywood Squares. That's how far back I go! Trek was even instrumental in me and my wife getting together. We lived in different towns, and she could get Next Generation, so we'd get together at her place and watch it. By the time the cable company in my town carried that channel, we were married. I'm talking small towns!

I wanted with this first post to expose the evolution of X'ok PaRel. He began, as a middle-aged Vulcan/Klingon, as an idea I had for a DS9 episode. In my head, of course. The concept was that he was captain of a privately owned and operated starship, an old surplus Constellation class ship. Like Kirk's Enterprise. Except that is was kind of an unofficial research ship. Without being officially attached to Starfleet, they kind of had access to things, and allowed access in return. Kind of a "skunkworks." Anyway, some emergency happens that forces this ship to reveal some of its capabilities in order to save the station. And X'ok was the big, loud, slightly crazy leader of the extremely diverse and creative crew.

When I found FF, I decided to use Mr. PaRel for my character.

Well, I think I'll see if this will actually post. Wish me luck.