Wasting Time – Page 2

Write Hard

I won this, and now I’m about to pay it forward.

The rules say (and we all know how good I am about rules, right)…

When you win:

1. Post the picture above to your blog. You can link here if you want. It doesn’t have to become part of the permanent clutter of your sidebar. Goodness no.

2. List at least three writers who you feel live up to the “write hard” spirit. Think: writers who work at their craft, writers who never give up despite the odds, writers who constantly turn out quality work. Writers you admire. Optional: explain why you think they are awesome.

3. Include these rules or a link to them.

4. Notify said writers of their victory. Ask them to pass on the torch.

5. Continue being awesome.

Hey, I’ll do one better. I can give you four.

Mercedes M. Yardley. You know how I idolize all those big-name writers whose writing wisdom revolves around, “There are no excuses, the muse is a myth, there is no writer’s block. Just sit down, STFU, and write!” But the thing is, when I fail at getting writing done–and I often do–there’s a subconscious comfort in knowing that I’m not my heroes. No, I’m not Ray Bradbury, so of course I couldn’t just churn out a story this week, I subconsciously think. It’s all good.

Then, I look at Mercedes.

Seriously, just read her blog. With everything she has going on, no one would ever blame her for missing a writing day. Except she almost never does. Or when she does, then she’s slushing or doing other writerly things–or, she’s doing wifey/motherly things. What she doesn’t do is give herself the excuse to whine about how there’s no time. No playing the world’s smallest violin for her!

If she has no excuses, I sure as hell have no excuses, not by a damn sight.

This is what Mr. Pink thinks of your writing excuses–and mine.

Calista Taylor. I joke about my ADD-like inability to focus on writing anything longer than a 5,000-word short story. As most of you know, the thought of writing something novel length has always scared the piss out of me. Dedicating yourself to a project that big is one thing. But knowing that even if you succeed in cranking it out, it could all still go down the drain if you can’t find an agent…? Or, even after you find an agent if no one buys it…? Or, even after someone buys it, it gets gutted or even axed for no good reason…? All that time and thousands of words… *shudder*

Yet, you know who’s been sticking it through all of those stages, and more than once? Cali. And that’s why I know she’s within a hair’s breadth of it. She’s given me a front row seat as to exactly what the ups and downs of novel publication looks like, and you better believe I’m taking careful notes.

There’s a two-way tie between Regan Leigh and Layna Pimentel. These two write as hard as anybody, but how they have time for that and still keeping up with their network of friends and contacts, to say nothing about the stuff going on in their lives, I have no idea. It’s all I can do to keep from turning anti-social to the point of misanthropy (Some might tell you I’ve failed miserably). The thought of hosting something like Query Chat? Damn, Regan. Beyond me, I tell you. And if anyone I’m following on Twitter is a real social butterfly–and I don’t mean just perpetually pinging them on #followfriday or #writerwednesday, but actually interacting with folks–it’s Layna.

Now, I don’t want to obligate anybody. Merc, Cali, Regan, and Layna have better things to do than pass this thing forward. I didn’t, but I love ’em all and I would’ve done it anyway.

Taking the First Step

If I had any brains, I’d just junk my Twitter account now. Spend enough time on it, and eventually your true self is revealed to all. Case in point…

Names have been omitted to protect the *snicker* innocent.

Oh, and “wrojo” = “writing mojo.”

Wrojo: I has it. At certain times.

One Good Turn, &c.

So, I may not be sure exactly where I fit into the whole social-writer-networking thing, but I at least know to return a compliment. I’m a little late, but let me return a shout-out to Medeia, who gave me The Picasso Award last week.

The idea is to post seven truths about myself and invite others to do the same. Now, in the interest of bandwidth conservation, I don’t like pressuring people into playing along. But by all means, any and all comers are welcome to.

So, here goes. But, caveat emptor: I share the same views on truth as Obi-Wan Kenobi.

One of my mutant superpowers is the ability to hum along with the horn lines from any Chicago song on any Chicago album.
If an object can cut a person, I can probably use it effectively as a weapon.
I’m a caffeine abuser. Always have been. And even though I struggle to moderate my use, I really don’t have any plans to cut it out completely.
While I like the idea of turning the other cheek, I don’t do it as much as I should. I treat my emotional and verbal battles like physical altercations, i.e. I counterattack while I’m defending myself. In both cases, that response was developed after years of training.
“Plan Z” (aka “My life plan if all else fails and falls apart”) is to take my trumpet and wander the earth like Caine in Kung-Fu, playing and finding adventure.
It’s been too long since I’ve played a table-top role-playing game.
My writing owes as much to jazz musician Chet Baker as it does to Raymond Carver.

Any questions?

Pants on Fire

So my friend Jess passed on the ~~Bald-Faced Liar~~ Creative Writer Award to this here blog. THANKS, JESS!! Not just for the award but for another fun game to play along with.

Here are the rules:

Thank the person who gave this to you. (see above)
Copy the logo and place it on your blog. (see above)
Link to the person who nominated you. (see above)
Tell up to six outrageous lies about yourself, and at least one outrageous truth. (see below)
Nominate seven “Creative Writers” who might have fun coming up with outrageous lies.
Post links to the seven blogs you nominate. (Umm… well…)
Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know you nominated them. (Uh, yeah…)

Anyway, let’s start with the outrageous lies and the one outrageous truth. Can you guess which is which?

Clevelanders are famous for lying about this, but I really was an extra in the parade scene in “A Christmas Story.” I was one of the folks standing right in front of Soldiers & Sailors Monument.
I once got a standing ovation singing “Sweet Transvestite” at a karaoke bar, embarassing another singer the way Huey Lewis did in the film Duets.
I lost my left big toe in a childhood bicycle mishap, finding out the hard way why there are always supposed to be guards around the chain.
I made it through two rounds of interviews for The Real World: San Francisco. Yes, the one with Puck. So glad I dodged that bullet.
Fourteen years ago, I embarassed myself backstage at a Chicago concert by telling the trumpet player, Lee Loughnane, that he was my idol and I wanted to be just like him.
When I was twenty, I once slept with a girl who would eventually become an actress who, until recently, co-starred in a famous network TV police procedural drama. She’d originally planned to be an engineer. (No, I won’t tell you which show.)
As I child, I had dreams of me being a sub in BDSM scenes before I even knew what BDSM was.

Anyway, the real truth is that while I occasionally break my rule of not spamming other people’s blogs, I’m a little wiped to think of seven folks who might be kind enough to play along. How about, I pick… you? I’d only ask one thing, which is that you leave a comment with a link if you do play along.

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…

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

Season’s Greetings

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!

Catching Up is Hard to Do

I’ve decided that part of the problems I’ve been having with writing have to do with all the stuff swimming in my psychic RAM that needs to be dumped out. So many blogworthy things going on; so little time to blog them. So, here goes.

1
Just ‘cos there haven’t been my usual Tough Love posts doesn’t mean that I haven’t been attending the biweekly evisceration. I just haven’t had anything to be eviscerated, not by the group, anyway.

2
I’m eviscerating my current short story in-progress, formerly titled “The Six-Hundred Dollar Man.” With every section of prose I clean up, I feel like I’m butting my head trying to stick to the story I want to tell.

You may be thinking, “Maybe it’s not the story that needs to be told.” Except I know in my gut it is.

3
And aside from that, I’ve got 3 other stories that I need to finish revising and send off.

4
I entered The First Annual Brain Harvest Mega Challenge a little while back. The Second Place Winner has been posted. And I have to say, if that’s second place, I think I’m pretty sure I didn’t make First Place. 🙁

5
Last Friday & Saturday, I attended the 2009 Rod Serling Conference. I’m still processing the experience, a weekend filled with scholars, fans, and artists including Serling’s surviving fammily and the legendary George Clayton Johnson on whose every word we hung.

A modern-day John the Baptist, if I ever saw one.