Category: Navel Gazing

Getting Things Done, For Longer Than I’ve Been Alive

Jim Lehrer, host of the PBS NewsHour (formerly known as, among other things, The MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour) for over 35 years, is one of my biggest writing influences. During his long and storied career in journalism, he’s written and published nineteen novels. This makes him one of my writing heroes, despite the fact that I haven’t read word one of his books.

So what makes him my influence? He wrote those books while he was anchoring, reporting in, and producing award-winning news shows. And he’s not some Johnny-Come-Lately who decided to “follow his real dream” once he got the NewsHour gig and after getting a bit of fame behind him. His first novel Viva, Max! was published in 1966, seven years before he teamed up with Robert MacNeil, at the beginning of a career that would garner him numerous awards for excellence in journalism.

Do a thought experiment with me. Lehrer’s books get fair-to-middlin’ reviews but let’s assume–purely for the sake of argument–that each and every one of his novels is utter crap (Again, I don’t know this, because I haven’t read any of them). Imagine how much work it would take to produce and publish nineteen bad novels, and you’ll see why I’m impressed.

In short, he’s a guy who gets his writing done, and in the interviews I’ve seen over the years in which he talks about his fiction, he gets it done anywhere and everywhere he can, every day.

I’ve met writers who hold down day jobs and/or are parents (some, of kids with special needs), and/or who are adult caregivers, and/or who are dealing with their own or someone else’s medical/mental/emotional problems. And I look at these folks, and at Jim Lehrer, and ask myself, “What the fuck excuse do I have?”

Does it make you ask the same?

How Don Is About to Get His Groove Back

As I slogged through my horrendous backlog of Google Reader items last week, I read one of the best writing-related posts I’d ever seen from io9.com entitled “12 Secrets to Being a Super-Prolific Short-Story Writer.” I actually know some of these…

  1. Know how your story ends before you begin it.
  2. Don’t just write the same story over and over again, or you’ll bore yourself.
  3. Start crude, then work on refining.
  4. Have a bunch of stories on the back burner, and keep rotating.
  5. Don’t be afraid to stare at the blank screen for a few hours.
  6. Write a bunch of stories in a shared world.
  7. Some stories are just the turning point in the story, not the whole story from beginning to end.
  8. Try creating a character study, or a collection of potent images, instead of just a series of plot twists.
  9. If you’re getting bogged down in a particular story, you probably haven’t found what it’s about yet.
  10. Try an exercise, like rewriting a well-known story from a different viewpoint.
  11. Don’t be afraid to take crazy risks.
  12. Write for different markets.

It’s no secret to anyone that I’m weeks overdue on delivering my Four Horsemen Contest story, for a number of reasons I won’t go into here. But every inch of the teeth-pulling progress I’ve made on the damn thing thus far was made by re-learning these two pieces of advice.

5) Don’t be afraid to stare at the blank screen for a few hours. Sometimes you gotta spend some time chewing over the turning point in your story. Sometimes the ending you thought was so crystal clear when you started out has turned mushy. Sometimes you have to throw out a thousand words of perfectly good story because it rang false and didn’t feel like the direction the story should be going in. There’s no substitute, on occasion, for sitting and sweating it out. Think about the characters, and what they’re actually thinking and feeling in the situation you’ve set up. Think about the themes you’ve established and what sort of resolution they’re leading to. Take the time to visualize the right ending for this story, or put it aside…

I’ve seriously forgotten how to just sit and sweat it out. I’d sit and get frustrated that nothing was coming. I’d make myself scribble some words down. Then I’d hit the backspace key and delete. Then I’d hit Ctrl-Z and put it all back. Rinse and repeat.

It’s a life issue, really. I’ve never had any trouble bleeding, sweating, or crying to keep my momentum going. I’ve had stuff knock me down, and I’ve had to get back up. But when something just stalls? When I’m working and working, and I’m just spinning my wheels? That’s often when I want to give up.

But I’m getting better.

9) If you’re getting bogged down in a particular story, you probably haven’t found what it’s about yet. This is sort of an extension of tip #5, I guess. Maybe you’re trying to make your characters care about what you want them to care about, instead of what it makes sense for them to care about. Maybe you’re focusing on a supporting character, while your main character is wandering around just outside the frame. Maybe the real theme or idea of your story is something you’ve only touched on in passing. The power of storytelling is so great, that when you find what your story is actually about, you may feel it propelling you forward with its unstoppable logic. The characters will be motivated to move forward, the mysteries will feel more and more urgent until someone solves them, and the underlying themes will get clearer and clearer until they form into some kind of potent image. That’s the idea, anyway.

And, I’m almost there.

Part of the problem (and no, I don’t really count the hell my work life has been the past few weeks) is that my writing process has moved soooo far away from starting with an idea. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with “First contact with mutual attraction between the species.” But I had a hell of a time starting with that because that idea, in itself, said nothing to me at first. Given the right germ of a scene, maybe a character interaction or a piece of dialogue, that idea might’ve occurred to me.

But, I’m not bitching! It took a bit of struggle, but I’ve actually found something resembling a theme, related to the “First contact with mutual attraction between the species” idea, that I can sink my teeth into, based on the characters and situations that have already presented themselves in the puke draft. And that’s what I’ve been working on, trying to hammer it into shape in the Forge of Vulcan (i.e. my netbook).

Yep, I can feel my groove coming back, slowly but surely.

Up a Slipstream Without a Paddle

Because I’m perpetually behind on my blog-reading, I only just found out that the proprietor of Lobster and Canary is going to attend Arisia at Cambridge, MA, the largest sf/f convention in New England.

The items on L&C’s particular schedule are of particular interest…

  • Non-Standard Fantasy
  • The Undefended Borders of SF
  • Interstitial Fiction: Dancing Between Genres
  • Inherent Darkness of Fairy Tales
  • The City as Character
  • Myth and Folklore in Fantasy

Of course, Daniel is scheduled to read as well, but I wanted to focus on the panels listed (I assume they’re panels).

(Oh, and yes, Calista — I now regret not coming and will plan to come out next year.) 🙂

Anyway, picture the sort of fiction that comes to mind when you hear those topics–love it or hate it–and you’ll have a good idea of the sort of stuff I aim to write. Aim, and still fall quite short of the mark. Still, unless the “please feel free to send us more” is part of certain markets’ form rejections, I remain hopeful. In any case, it brought to mind a conversation I had yesterday which dislodged a memory of a blog post from writer Steven Barnes…

You should read ten times as much as you intend to write. Want to write 1000 words a day? Read 10,000 words. Furthermore, this reading should be BETTER than your current ability, and BETTER than your intended goal, if possible. Want to write comic books? Read pulp fiction. Write pulp fiction? Read popular fiction. Write popular fiction, read bestsellers. Write bestsellers? Read classics.

And you want to write classics? Well…pick your grandparents very carefully.

I’ve internalized this advice to the point where it actually took me a second to remember where it came from. But it begs the question, what do I read that’s “better” than my intended goal if I want to write what I say I want to write?

Now, I’ve done or am doing most of the “required reading” — Feeling Very Strange, Interfictions and Interfictions 2, Conjunctions 39 and 52, Tin House 33, The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, (edited to add:) Trampoline, and most of the individual short story collections published by Small Beer Press, and others. But there are times when I feel like I’m being shown how to do the breaststroke before being taught how to properly do a front crawl. Don’t know where the swimming analogy came from, but it’s as good as any.

And I guess the main reason I’m thinking about all of this–assuming it’s not a symptom of the Andromeda Strain I’ve been fighting off the past few days–is that I seem to be feeling a bit of existential angst about my writing. I don’t even care about, Will this pay off in the end, or not? I care more about, Am I doing this right or just spinning my wheels? Are my goals reasonable? What am I doing as a writer?

Also, Who the hell am I as a writer, anyway?

Motion in Poetry

Last Sunday night, I attended a poetry workshop by the current Broome County (NY) Poet Laureate, Andrei Guruianu at Buffalo St. Books. He did a reading from a few of his collections, including his latest, and nothing was sacred anymore, and then guided willing attendees through an exercise.

Guruianu did a brief lecture on poetic elements, which was very useful. Up until now, I had no criteria for judging any piece of poetry other than, “I know what I like.” And Guruianu’s words about the elements of what he considers to be good poetry gave me at least one way to evaluate the poetry I read from now on. To him, the best poetry uses words to depict an environment or invoke images that are concrete, significant, meaningful, and which resist the mind’s tendency to go off on tangents and lean toward abstractions.

Afterward, I went back through the five or six books that I laughingly call my “poetry library” and I’ll be damned if I didn’t go back to the ones listed as my favorites and found just that. Not one poem about “war” or “time” or “space” or “that girl who broke my heart.” Poems on those sorts of topics, yes. But not about the abstract concepts.

And of course, I went back through what I laughingly call the “poems” I’ve written thus far. Now, I knew most of them sucked, but now I know at least one reason why! And the few (well, one… okay two or three) that “worked,” did so because they generally had more concrete elements.

So, to answer the questions that are undoubtedly on your mind…

  1. Yes–I’d like to write more poetry. Maybe see if I can salvage the stuff I’ve written so far. Maybe write something like the work I heard at the poetry panel I attended at Astronomicon 11.
  2. No–I’m not posting any of it here. Maybe at Fictionaut, but even then probably not for public consumption. Because I care for you all, far too much. Maybe once I’ve learned a few more things.

“Too Many Voices”

I like song lyrics. Sometimes, they get me thinking and then I like to dissect those thoughts like the Zapruder film.

I don’t wanna wait
For our lives to be over.
Will it be yes, or will it be
Sorry?

Let me tell you something about my Muse, the little shit.

My relationship to it is best expressed on the Tumblr I use as a notebook of the things I feed it. I call it the place…

Where I strap my muse to a chair like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, pin its eyes open, and force-feed its brain until it does what it’s fucking told.

Yes, I brainwash my Muse, typically by waterboarding it every so often. Not too much, though. Like Nice Guy Eddie says in Reservoir Dogs, “If you fucking beat this prick long enough, he’ll tell you he started the goddamn Chicago fire, now that don’t necessarily make it fucking so!”

Some might say that’s harsh. I know there are folks who feed and care for and cradle their precious Muse. They are not wrong to do so. And if it works for them, I’m very glad! But call me as delusional as the folks who think the “enhanced interrogation” techniques at Gitmo actually work–I’ll be damned if they don’t work on my Muse, at least as well as cradling it ever did!

I’ve made a lot of progress with my Muse over the past few years. It does need a bit of “encouraging” every now and again, but it seems to be spitting out ideas when I want them, and a lot of times, even when I don’t want them! The important thing though is that I do not wait for my Muse to give it up before I write. That’d be stupid.

As Octavia Butler noted, “…habit is more dependable than inspiration.” I’ve learned that ideas really are a dime a dozen and that what my Muse will not do most times is form those ideas into actual stories for me. Once in awhile, maybe. But the hard truth is, my little bastard of a Muse really doesn’t care if I finish my stories or not! No, that’s squarely up to me, and the only way that’s done is by sitting down day after day and writing, with my Muse’s waterboard right next to me, pouring and writing, whether it gives me reliable and actionable intel or not!

Because I absolutely do not want to be one of those writers who bitches and moans about being uninspired and who get no writing done because of it.

Any Given Sunday

I was drunk enough to agree, but not drunk enough to deny remembering I agree. Leave it to Mercedes to strike at exactly the right time! She wanted a throw down with the loser to re-enact one of my fantasies: to be Jesus, serenaded by Yvonne Elliman, complete with jazz hands:

But that wasn’t enough. Oh, no. The more, the merrier, we said, so we invited Harley and Jason.

Yes, we Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are going to be engaged in mortal combat, with a theme chosen by a neutral party, one Boudreau Freret.

The Theme: A sci-fi/fantasy short story describing, “The first contact of two species with a mutual attraction betwixt them.”

Story Deadline: We have until February 1, 2010 to come up with an original story based on the theme, to be simultaneously submitted to a SFWA-approved market.

The Stakes: First person to be published in the chosen market wins.

The losers will video themselves performing a song of the winner’s choice (“Everything’s Alright” in my case), complete with jazz hands!!

These are all worthy adversaries. I don’t underestimate a single one of them. I’ve read their words. We’re all at various stages of our writing careers, and yet a contest like this–well hell, a lot of publishing in general–has an “any given Sunday” feel to it. It could very well be me on video, jazz-handing along to someone else’s tune.

This is going to be a first. I’ve never written to avoid humiliation before! 🙂

###

Edited to add: Harley’s and Mercedes’ understandably skewed opinions on the matter.

“We must set brand new goals/ We must not lose control…”*


(This is from my new planner–nifty, huh?)

Like just about every other writer’s blog out there, this is where I get to talk some about my 2010 writing goals.

This is mostly brainstorming, really. It’s thinking at what’s known in the GTD-world as “horizons of focus.” Specifically, the things I’d like to see for my writing future at the “30,000 foot level” (i.e. 12-14 months from now).

1
I’d like to network better. In 2009, I made some strides in connecting with other writers (online and in person) and with other artists. Playwrights, poets, filmmakers, and musicians. But I passed up a lot of opportunities, too. I was shoulder to shoulder with Joyce Carol Oates for a split second, but said nothing, not even when she was signing. Legendary comic book writers from the 70s & 80s come through this town once or twice a year. One of them even lives here, and I haven’t introduced myself to him.

The reason is my dread of the thought of being that over-eager writer who gets told by a seasoned master, “Go away kid, you bother me.” Time for me to get over that. And I’m going to at Readercon 21!

2
I need to get my lit/flash fiction back on track. This is sort of related to the networking goal. Between here and Twitter, I need to make time to get back into Fictionaut and Zoetrope. I briefly connected with some writers whose work I idolized before I focused on genre stuff, but lost touch. Plus, I learned so much there from the critiques I got from my flash pieces. I was kinda dumb to let that slip away, but you know what? My accounts are still active, and it’s never too late, right?

3
12 is the magic number. That’s one story per month, written, submitted and kept in circulation. If none of them sell by next December, fine. But they will be in circulation.

4
I need to move a bunch of back-burner non-fiction projects up to the front. I confess, stubbornness is part of what motivates this goal. I’m irked that I haven’t been able to repeat my McSweeney’s success of five years ago–though I admit, my efforts have been lackadaisical at best. But it’s not just humor I’m interested in.

I’ve mentioned my “seekrit #wip” on Twitter. It’s secret because–again, this is a pride thing related to my networking fears, I think–the whole thing could be a wash at any time, and I dread the thought of answering questions like, “Hey, what happened with that [seekrit #wip]?” with “Eh, nothing.”

Suffice it to say that it’s going to be a researched non-fiction work, and if I can pull this off, it would be quite the feather in my geek cap.

Okay, I think my brain is sufficiently dumped. Maybe today I can actually do something about some of these.

*The title’s from here, btw…

“Too Many Voices”

I like song lyrics. Sometimes, they get me thinking and then I like to dissect them like the Zapruder film. Just something I’m going to try in 2010 to give me something to talk about here. Should’ve thought of this years ago :). Call this a field test.

Many reasons that hold you back
That tell you no
Make you fall short of what you want to say
Too many voices in my head
Where’s the boy who used to take chances
Used to say when I grow up to be a man someday
True to my heart in every way
Seems so simple
Why’s it so hard
I’ll never know

This isn’t going to be a story of how I suddenly found myself or an epiphany about my purpose on earth which I’m dedicating myself to living out in 2010. It’s not a manifesto or a mission statement. This is about struggle–I guess you could say The Struggle. And I mean that in a positive way.

Inspiration is all well and good. I certainly couldn’t get by without it. And for the longest time, this song did inspire me. But it didn’t really do anything for me until I pondered what Robert Lamm was talking about when he asked, Why is it so hard?

I dunno. Lamm asked that question for his own reasons. Me, all I need to know is that it is hard, and that’s just the way it is. I look back at every success I’ve had in 2009, in the two main areas of my life–Writing and Everything else–and I’ve come to accept that inspiration and luck only ever got me so far.

The rest of it really was work. Nose-to-the-grindstone, ass-in-the-chair, bite-the-bullet fucking work!

I’m jealous of the folks who find joy in the process of writing, I really do. I read their thoughts on their blogs and I’m very happy for them. But their words never resonated with me. No, I’m definitely one of those writers who finds joy in having written. When a piece is done and submitted, I’m happy. (I say this knowing I have no control over whether it’s published–if it is, it’s gravy.) But I’ll be damned if it’s not like pulling teeth.

I’ve noticed that the writers I like the most, the ones whose stuff I like to read, make no bones about how hard the writing life is. They don’t complain how The Evil Publishing Illuminati are keeping them from getting their work out. They don’t blog excessively about the source of their writer’s block–they bitch for two seconds, pull up their big boy/big girl pants and attack the writing life like Chow Yun-Fat in a John Woo Hong Kong action film. They just get to it!

The only way to success, I’ve found, really is through the struggle–The Struggle–and to be sure, that’s hard to face. I have to re-teach myself that lesson over and over, and I don’t expect it to be different in 2010. I can only resolve to make the lesson stick for longer and longer periods of time.

The alternative is too horrible to contemplate, namely a life of sitting around pondering Lamm’s song lyric up there and never coming to a satisfactory answer.

So, what Struggle are you going to walk into, with glocks in both hands, in order to get to where you want to be in 2010?

Too Slow to Use “Shield.”

Everybody, thank Calista (I can hear the Bundy family going, “Thanks, Calista.”) for tagging me on her blog. I thank her, because I’ve been scrambling to figure out what my next topic is going to be.

1)What’s the last thing you wrote? What’s the first thing you wrote that you still have?
The last thing I wrote would be part of the current manuscript I’m working on. As for the first thing, it was a murder mystery/romance that I never completed. Maybe someday.

EDIT: Why didn’t anyone tell me I copied/pasted Calista’s answer verbatim?

Last thing I wrote was my attempted comeback into a certain lit humor magazine of an Irish persuasion. Submitted today. First thing I wrote that I still have is my first attempt at a “literary non-fiction” thing. I forgot WTH it was even about, and that’s probably for the best.

2) Write poetry?
Yes, but it’s not fit for human consumption.

3) Angsty poetry?
No more so than my fiction :).

4) Favorite genre of writing?
Slipstream. (Whatever that means) 🙂

5) Most annoying character you’ve ever created?
A minor character in my very first published piece of fiction. An obsequious toad who, if memory serves, got his in the end.

6) Best plot you’ve ever created?
That first story was probably my best plotted.

7) Coolest plot twist you’ve ever created?
That would be the end to this story.

8) How often do you get writer’s block?
Generally, I agree with comics writer Brian K. Vaughn, who wrote, “‘Writer’s block’ is just another word for video games. If you want to be a writer, get writing, you lazy bastards.” Except in one circumstance.

In almost every instance where I just cannot, for the life of me, get words out, it’s usually because there some unattended piece of business has latched on to what David Allen calls my “Psychic RAM.” If I can somehow process that thing, then any further “writer’s block” on my part is simply time-wasting.

9) Write fan fiction?
First and only piece when I was 12.

10) Do you type or write by hand?
Whatever gets the words out fast enough at any given moment. I have my netbook and/or legal pad and/or index cards around me at all times. All times. Weddings, funerals, whatever. All times.

11) Do you save everything you write?
Yes.

12) Do you ever go back to an idea after you’ve abandoned it?
As long as I can hone in on whatever resonated with that idea in the first place.

13) What’s your favorite thing you’ve ever written?
My one, and so far only, piece that was ever accepted by McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

14) What’s everyone else’s favorite story you’ve written?
I still get more juice out of that McSweeney’s piece than anything else, and that was almost five years ago, now.

15) Ever written romance or angsty teen drama?
I didn’t think I did, until an editor decided that one of my stories was “Fantasy/Romance.” Hey, ain’t nu’in wrong with that, I say :).

16) What’s your favorite setting for your characters?
Down the block, a few years ago, or twenty minutes into the future.

17) How many writing projects are you working on right now?
I’ve taken on some fun small side-projects this month, sort of as a break from the shell game of submitting/resubmitting my backlog of stories.

18) Have you ever won an award for your writing?
I placed in a flash fiction competition, but didn’t win.

19) What are your five favorite words?
“We would like to publish…”

20) What character have you created that is most like yourself?
Probably the guy from “Tough Love,” except he’s slightly more of a tool than I am.

21) Where do you get your ideas for your characters?
Usually, a person in my mind, a total stranger, does something stupid and then wants to tell me about it. I write it down for my amusement.

22) Do you ever write based on your dreams?
Not directly, though as I think about my dreams and put them into words in my head, occassionally I’ll come up with a phrase and say, “Ooh, I’m gonna use that.”

23) Do you favor happy endings?
My stories are like life… sometimes you get the happy ending, sometimes you don’t. And whatever happens, happens ;).

24) Are you concerned with spelling and grammar as you write?
Hukt on foniks werkt fer me!

25) Does music help you write?
Yes. And don’t ask me to describe which kinds help me when–that’s a whole separate blog.

26) Quote something you’ve written. Whatever pops in your head.
“Maybe if I stay really, really still, the clowns won’t find me when they come out of the mirror.”

I’m not usually a tagger, but that doesn’t mean you can’t play along in the comments or linkback to your own blog!

Soul Power

All white soul singers insist they grew up listening to Sam Cooke.
–Diablo Cody

Depending on who you ask, my favorite male vocalist is one of the unsung legends of blue-eyed soul, Bill Champlin. If you doubt his soul credentials, you should know that he’s not really doing covers of the tunes “Turn Your Love Around” and “After the Love Is Gone” in the following videos. He co-wrote them and won Grammys for his trouble…

There’s no getting around it–this genre’s all about White boys singing in a style that wasn’t originally meant for them. Now, I don’t want to get into a long musicology lesson about cultural appropriation, blah blah yadda yadda. But Champlin, Bobby Caldwell, Hall & Oates (Screw you, I like Hall & Oates. If you can’t hear the brilliance in their Abandoned Luncheonette album, I feel sorry for you!)–they’ve got respect.

And that gives me hope.

From the info I’ve gleaned about them after listening to their music over the years, these guys just played and sang what they wanted to play. And for as much praise as they’ve received, they’ve taken some crap too. It kind of resembles the crap my subconscious feeds me about my writing. “You ain’t got no business.” Or, “You’re not writing what the market demands.” Or, “Yeah, quit trying to be a wannabe [insert one of my 20 favorite writers here].”

Again, it comes down to perseverance. Perseverance doesn’t always silence those voices. But it gives you something to do as you strive to shut those voices the hell up. Now, that’s some soul power right there.