Monday, July 21, 2014

Destruction is easier than creation...

How long does it take to build a house? I suppose it depends on a number of factors... A builders survey says that it takes on average 7 months. I imagine with a very dedicated team, a small enough house and zero inspections/no building code to contend with you could build a house in a week.

Last week Corey and I watched them tear down the house next to us (condemned by the city) in a handful of hours.





That much took only 30 or 45 minutes (less time than it will take me to write this post). 
Corey and I watched the whole thing from our kitchen window while having our morning coffee.



It was this part, clean up with the bobcat, that took a few hours (still less time than it takes me to edit/rewrite a chapter of Blade's Edge).



The final result is what you see above.


Here are some pictures of things that I have done in the last week that took longer than it took them to tear down a whole house:

Make this stack of tortillas from scratch: 


And turn them into this quesadilla:


Take the dog on an off-leash adventure in this park:


Bake this bread:


Finish the formatting on, order a proof copy of, receive my proof copy of, read through my proof copy of Rain on a Summer's Afternoon and decide that it's ready for print:




Definitive proof that destroying is easier than creating.



:-)


That last one has me very excited. 

For those interested: the Paperback of Rain on a Summer's Afternoon will go on sale between Wednesday and Friday of this week (amazon takes 3-5 business days to release the paperback on its site after approval and I submitted my approval on Sunday). Details will be available here as soon as I have them.

In the meantime, if you just can't wait to read those stories you can get the ebook version for just $0.99 here

Now I'm going to get back to all my various projects that take substantially longer than tearing down a house. 







4 comments :

  1. Ah but you are missing a key point, the destruction of the house was contingent upon the creation of a machine capable of destroying said house. While your point generally stands, destruction can happen instantaneously while creation takes a significant bit more time, the two are coupled. Creation stems from destruction and destruction breeds creation....

    Anyways, I am loving your writing. Keep it up!

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    1. I just realized that I posted my responses to this as new comments rather than as replies to yours, so you probably never saw them. Ahem. See below. :-) (And thanks so much for reading!)

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  2. I'm not suggesting that they're not linked, or that one is better or worse, just that the act of destroying is easier.

    Of course, if you really get into it, and assess the how much time the guy running the excavator must have trained, plus all of design time and construction time to create the excavator itself, then sure that greatly boosts destruction time. But, if that's how we're going to roll, then let us also include the design/build time for my laptop, my kitchen, the stove I used to bake, the crop that created the flour I used... It goes on and on.

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  3. If you really want to nitpick you could claim that time spent is not necessarily equivalent to ease vs. difficulty, and you'd have a decent point.

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