"When life gives you lemons, make lemonade."

It's a phrase we've all heard and is fully worth taking to heart.  After all, life can be pretty mean sometimes.  It'll find every chance to knock you down, take your drive, and render you hopeless and feeling like it's not worth trying.

We've all been there.  I've been there.  Several times.  Each time I spent a while pondering what the heck I'm fighting for.

But lemonade?  I've never cared for it.  I don't care what life gave me.  I want more.

Now to be fair, there are some things that can't be ignored.  Life gave me a bad knee.  I was told I'd grow out of it, but I haven't.  I still think I'd have turned into a pretty good NFL running back, assuming I found the right coaches, which I like to think I would have.  But my knee kept me out of pretty much all sports in high school.

So instead, I got into fencing in college.  Low impact, but VERY analytical.  My teacher called it high speed chess with a three-foot blade.  I wasn't too bad at it actually.  Good enough to go to the Olympics with time and effort?  Probably not, but still, it was good.

But long before that, life gave me Dysgraphia.  A learning disability so unknown I had to teach my spellchecker how to spell it.  It's been described as a short circuit in the brain that makes it hard to get thoughts from my head to my hand.  It fits.  There's no such thing as "jotting down" for me, as even a short paragraph can be a ten minute chore.  Simple shopping list?  Heh, not for me it's not.  I can't handle as much stress as you.  My short term memory is bad.  My handwriting is STILL terrible.  By all accounts, I shouldn't be able to write very well.

Oh yeah, did I announce yet that my first novel is going through the early stages of self-publication?

Lemonade?  I'm not settling for that.  And I think too often we're told we should.  People see our weaknesses and say, "hey, find what you can do, and make do with it.  Find the joy in it."  Find joy in being limited?  Why settle?

Now before you jump down my throat, the sentiment is actually good.  If we can't find the joys in what we can do, we'll be miserable forever.   But I heard about a young girl who is legally blind, and another fellow who lost both legs below the knee.  Life gave them a ton of lemons.

That girl has earned medals in state gymnastics championships.  And the guy?  You probably heard of him.  He ran in a couple of track and field events in the last summer Olympics.  No, not the special Olympics.  The regular one!  Against people without limitations!

We can settle for what we're given, and there are times where we really should.  With my knee I don't dare go out for football.  One wrong hit or plant, and I'd probably ruin it forever.  But I'm a fiction writer with Dysgraphia.  I've never let anything stop me from doing what I want to do with my life.  9/11 taught me that.  I've taken life by the horns and made it work for me.  I don't care what it throws at me, nor should you.  We shouldn't ever let limitations stop us from achieving what we want to do with our lives.  It's like a phrase I saw on an online forum board.  I'd give credit if I knew who said it first, but I've never forgotten it.

"When life gives you lemons, throw them back in its face and demand chocolate."

That legally blind gymnast, that double amputee track runner, that writer with Dysgraphia, we were all given lemons.

We all demanded chocolate.

“Missile Launch!”

From the moment you read, (and at times, hear) those words, you know exactly what’s going on.  It's as if you too are a member of the crew.  It’s not just the one thing, it’s everything.  The hundreds of details going on the second you hear those words.  You know what's coming, what you're dealing with, how you plan to face it, countermeasures about to be used, you know EXACTLY what's going on.

This is how you know when a writer did their job.

Last time I talked about the power fiction holds when done well.  Now I'm going to focus on what that can look like.  In so many shows and books, the worlds are pretty good, but lacking just one tid bit.  One or two little things that don't quite get it there.  As much as I love Star Trek, my biggest pet peeve about their tech is the fact that any time their engines die, they come to a stop.  Engines loose power, and we cut to seeing the ship slow to a halt.  Uhm, it's space right?  Nothing to act on the ship, nothing to slow it down.  So if the engines are dead, why is the ship stopping?

That's what I love about the Honor Harrington novels by David Weber.  I'll admit, he gets a bit heavy on the science, and at times I glaze over it.  But at the same time, he finds a way to keep the world living and consistent despite that hole.  As you read each book, you learn more about how the world works, and how things work in it.

Right now, I could tell you quite a bit about the military ships, how they fight, and why they use what they use.  Why?  He built the world that good.  The characters are so real I've gotten to know them like I was there.  At times I wonder what position I'd hold under Harrington's command, and how much she'd notice me.  Would I be on the bridge, the hanger, the ground.... the brig?  I know one thing, I'd be itching to serve under her, or any of her former officers who earn their own command.

Good books (and movies or TV shows) do that.  They build a world so completely you get to understand it like you live in it.  When playing the game Mass Effect, it's much the same.  The tech works.  The world works.  Shoot, I wanted to jump in and become an anthropologist who specialized in the Krogan culture (Krogans are one of the alien races in the game).  It fascinated me that much, and it's not even real!

I know more than a few people roll their eyes when we say books transport you places.  All I can say is they've either never read the right books, or they haven't surrendered to them enough.  Because I have been to Tuchunka, the Krogan homeworld.  I have run with wolves with Firekeeper.  I have been in battle aboard the HMS Fearless, twice.  And I have been to many other places, all very real to me.

What about you?  Where have you been?  What books were written so well the world was truly alive to you?  I can't be the only one who's been other places without leaving my favorite chair.

For one thing, my favorite chair is on the HMS Fearless.  You know, the one where I get to see Honor Harrington do what she does best.  And sometimes, when I get really really lucky, I get to pet the treecat on her shoulder.