Category: creativity

Early morning wake-up

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It’s another few days ahead of waking up at stupid:early AM for the 4am shift start. I can certainly still do it at my age, even if I don’t get enough sleep the night before, though I pay for it later that day once I’m off the clock. But I keep telling myself: if I can make it through the first couple of hours when I’m solo and prepping the front end for doors open, then I’m all set for the rest of the shift when the rest of my team comes in. From there it’s a matter of not overexerting myself and taking each issue calmly.

I don’t stretch as much as I should, though I’m doing it a lot more than I used to. I’m walking a lot more, as this is a pretty big shop and I usually have a lot of things to do that take me to different departments. I average around three miles on a good day, often more! But during those quiet times when I’m filling in at the register for someone, I’ll do Rin Shima’s stretches you see above right (the cross-arm and the overhead), then I’ll do the foot rotation stretches I used to do at Yankee Candle.

I still have not been able to do any creative work while at the day job as it doesn’t really provide me with enough time for it. But I’m okay with that now. The day job is the day job and I’ll focus on that while I’m on the clock. But as soon as I’m home — well, after giving the cats proper attention and winding down with some passive internetting — I’ll get myself started with the blogging and the 750. And finally, after dinner, I’ll start working on the main project, in this case the Persistence Remaster.

Pretty much close to what I used to do at YC. Not exact, but I’m no longer trying for exact. I’m just looking for whatever works best.

Mind you, after those early morning wake-ups, I get to appreciate the days off where I can sleep in that much more.

Clarity

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[This was also posted at my Dreamwidth blog yesterday as something that’s been on my mind lately.]

As I get older I find myself seeking clarity more and more. The problem with doing that when I was younger was that I was still stuck looking at that in terms of extreme opposites: I’m either Totally Locked In or I’m Completely Disconnected. I either have All The Feels or I’m Cynical and Don’t Give a Shit. I knew that wasn’t want I wanted, bur nor did I want to keep pretending that I could find a happy medium where I could be all at the same time. That just became emotionally and mentally exhausting.

Lately I’ve been thinking about it in terms of my own levels of media consumption. I’m not exactly talking about avoiding the online doomscrolling, though that has often been a problem. It’s more along the lines of remembering when I could consume with clarity. That is, like what I like to whatever degree, ignore what doesn’t resonate with me, and for the love of pie it’s not a contest with everyone else in the universe. Social media is fine if you set your own boundaries and catch yourself when you’re slipping into obsession, or the fear of missing out.

That was my issue: I’d set those boundaries and then completely forgot about them because my brain is wired to obsess. [Thus my ridiculously large music library.] I realized this when the pandemic started and made inroads to rewire my head a bit. It took a few years considering it had gotten out of control like weeds in an untended garden, but I got there eventually. There’s always weeding to be done, but it’s much easier to do now.

And now I’m at a point where I can do a bit of fine-tuning. With age and experience — and a rewired brain — I can say, ‘okay, this is where I want my head to be at, so let’s head in that direction.’ Listening to my favorite music from the past is helping, because I’m purposely not doing it only as a way to reminisce. I’m currently listening to the stuff from 2002-2003 while I work on the Remaster Edition of The Persistence of Memories. I’ve been posting the Thirty Years On series at the music blog and talking about 1996 (and continuing into 1997 because why not). And the long-game reason for doing this has to do with rewiring how I listen to current music: to once more listen to new releases that resonate with me, and to have it stay with me for more than just a few months. I know it can be done because there have been current releases that have done that (GIFT’s Illuminator album, for instance). And slowly, I’m starting to reclaim that.

It’s definitely an ongoing process, but it’s one that I’m able to control if I keep at it.

Finding a writing process

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[NOTE: The below is mostly from my 750Words entry from yesterday, but I felt it worth sharing here.]

We were talking the other day about Your Name — one of my all time favorite movies — and how, when we went to see it in the theater in Japantown awhile back, I was reminded of just how perfect a movie it was. Every part of the story has meaning, is there for a reason, and is woven into a rich tapestry. It’s a perfect example of what I like to call ‘they’ve done their homework’. There are very few movies, books, and music that resonate with me that deeply (The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity is a current one, of course) but as I’d said to A yesterday, I always saw that movie as a benchmark for me to achieve with my own writing. I doubt I’ll ever reach the levels of Makoto Shinkai, but it gives me a firm goal to work towards.

I think that’s close to where I reached with the Bridgetown Trilogy, and especially with The Persistence of Memories. It wasn’t just a perfect storm of positive personal life, great music and a wave of unbridled creativity. Those things of course fueled it, but it wasn’t entirely borne out of it, now that I think about it.

I’d gone into the trilogy with a few things on my mind:
–This would be the end result of a long-simmering project dating back to 1993, so I did not want to do a half-assed job of it.
–I had such a deep well of ideas for this created universe dating back to the same time, and I did not want to waste any of it.
–I was at a day job at a warehouse where I didn’t have to waste much-needed brain power problem solving (the most pressing things I had to think about were building pallets neatly and correctly, where to stage them, and how to get them to fit onto the truck), which meant that I could spend most all of my waking hours focused on my writing.
–I knew that if I stopped and ‘took a few days off’ I’d get lazy and miss even more writing days, which was part of my undiagnosed ADHD issues, so I purposely drove myself to hyperfocus on the writing instead…while also ensuring that I kept it fun for myself. It was a balance between wanting to reach word count and becoming super excited about wanting to keep this story alive.

And to tie in with what I was saying above: this was a story where ‘I did my homework’. The further along I went with it, the deeper and richer it became. And the wild thing is that most of this happened in my head, because I was really not that much of an outliner! Like I’ve said numerous times, the most I ever planned out with the trilogy was maybe three or four scenes ahead, or maybe one or two chapters ahead, and even then it was less an outline than a vague list of beats to hit as I came up with them.

All the while, I was keeping multiple character threads going in my head. Caren and Poe were focusing on two things: balancing their own spiritual awakening while protecting Denni; Anton knew he wasn’t in charge but had to make it look like he was; Natianos believed he was pulling the strings but didn’t expect Denni and Saisshalé to take over; Nehalé was going through a crisis of faith; and so on and so on. This is why the scenes are set up as they are: they focus mostly on the important character in that particular scene, fully and with deep immersion. The other characters might have been in the scene as well, yet I would only focus on their reaction (or non-reaction) in a later scene. Everything and everyone was interwoven into this story, but I had to see the separate threads going.

Looking back on it, it’s kind of amazing that I did that with my first professional novels. I did it to a much lesser extent with the standalones, but that’s because they didn’t need that much intensity. It was a process I came up with on my own, one that worked for me, and one I still use to some degree. In fact, I’ve been contemplating following my own example with another attempt at rewriting Theadia. The only reason I’d stepped away from that process was because the Trilogy had been such an incredibly long project that I needed to try something small and compact — both to give myself a mental break and to see if I could pull it off.

Like I said, I don’t expect to hit Shinkai levels of perfection, but I remain inspired to at least ‘do my homework’ and write the best work I can.

Adjust as necessary

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I’ve just come up with an idea that could possibly help me with my creative outlets, and it’s not about bringing the whiteboard schedule back. I’ll admit it worked for me quite well in the past, but over the last couple of years it’s lost its appeal and felt more like a deadline than a guideline. And the more I missed those deadlines (whether due to Real Life Stuff or Day Job schedule or something else), the more frustrated I started to feel.

As you can see, I’m trying to get back into my regular blogging schedule. It’s one that’s worked well for ages and doesn’t use up too much of my time, as long as I’m not writing the entries at the last minute. And I’m hesitantly trying to get back into my daily words at 750Words, which I’d also put aside for a couple of months. I’m not exactly daily yet with that, but I’m getting there. I’ve turned the morning notifications back on in the hopes that it’ll help inspire me to return there more often.

Right now I only have two calendars, as I’ve retired the whiteboard. One is my Zen-a-Day that’s on my desk, which essentially serves its intended purpose as something to think about during the day. The other is the monthly calendar that’s hanging just above my PC tower. In the past I used to put my day job hours on it, along with any other events A and I would be going to. Right now it’s pretty empty.

But while working on today’s 750Words, I thought (and wrote): How about this: on Sunday, when I’m doing my PC cleaning and house errands, why not plan out the rest of the week? Make some time for some creative outlets. Instead of a schedule, at the start of each week I can say something like “hey, let’s work on a comic on Thursday since I have that day off”. I have Sundays off for the most part and do in fact use that day as a ‘cleaning and errand day’, so I think that would be a perfect time to block out an hour or two without it being rigid or repetitive. This would give me more flexibility for anything that might arise scheduled or not, and I can work around other things that might be going on. And most importantly, it gives me a positive thing to look forward to.

Whether this will work out will of course depend on how much energy and dedication I put into it. The whole point is to build up those creative muscles again yet still retain the ability to adjust as necessary.

Slow going

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I admit I am a bit frustrated that it’s taking me forever to finish Theadia. My writing sessions lately have been sluggish and not all that productive, getting only maybe a few hundred words at most, and often quite less. Right now I’m stuck on a scene that’s taking me forever to get through, mainly because I have only the vaguest of ideas of what I want to do with it. [There’s also the fact that I’ve been dealing with spring allergies lately, which have been leaving me with less energy than I usually have.]

As always, the only thing I can do right now is power through.

Meanwhile, what else is happening on the creative front? Well, not all that much at the moment, sadly. I’ve been kind of delaying that more than I really should. Perhaps it’s a mix of not wanting to force myself into anything else at the moment and the fact that I’m still getting used to my recent job transfer. Not that it’s harder or more stressful, quite the opposite; it’s actually that it’s taking time for me to get used to not stress-working through multiple responsibilities (each with constantly shifting priority levels). This change in stress levels means that my body is responding in kind, suddenly realizing wait, you mean I can finally relax? SWEET! I’m sure it’ll balance out eventually and I’ll be back to normal soon.

I remember this happening when I left the Former Day Job six years ago. I had no idea how flipping exhausted I was then, and it took quite a few months for everything to go back to normal. I don’t expect it to take nearly as long this time of course, but I’m still a bit impatient about it.

Like I said, powering through.

Unplugging

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So here I am listening to the new album by London dreampop/shoegaze band deary, and it got me thinking about how waaaaaaaay back in the day, I used to listen to Cocteau Twins to allow myself a bit of a dive into another world. This kind of musical genre, with its heavy wall of reverb guitars, slow dreamlike melodies and otherworldly vocals, always brings up the same sort of imagery in my head: the sound of walking deep in the woods, far away from any other sign of civilization. Sometimes it’s dark, sometimes it’s overcast. There’s always that hint of desolation, but not necessarily in a bad way; it’s more like finding a personal moment of Zen peace.

At least that’s what used to happen back then, well before I plugged myself into the internet in the late 90s. Since then I’ve been pretending that I keep the internets and my offline brain separate, but we all know that hasn’t been happening for ages now. My brain just loves that dopamine hit, especially when it’s getting drunk on constant music listening, socializing and constant movement of thought with nary a moment’s peace. Where does the real end and the cybernetics begin at this point?

Anyway, this is not so much about unplugging as it is another chapter in me Getting Older and finally deciding to detach myself from the multiple races my head is trying to keep running. Don’t get me wrong: it wasn’t all terrible, you know. I’ve met all kinds of neat people over all those years, some brief acquaintances and some long-lasting friendships. Learned a lot of really cool things, discovered all kinds of awesome music, been inspired to write stories.

But somewhere along the line my brain rewired itself when I wasn’t paying attention and I was too lax about backing away when it became too much. Instead I did what I often did during those same teen years when I listened to that same dreamlike music: I spiraled instead. I dove in to see just how far and how long I could keep taking it all in. And I had one hell of a voracious mental appetite.

So here I am, older and (hopefully) wiser, finally deciding it’s time to unplug from all that nonsense. It’s been an interesting run, but it was full of mental and emotional exhaustion. I’m not completely disconnecting from the world, of course. Just no longer spending every waking moment at top volume. I’ve distanced myself from a lot of things over the last couple of years already, so this is nothing new. It’s just deciding to go a bit further and relocating that mental and emotional Zen peace, and making that the new norm.

Here we go

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Latest revision of Theadia complete? Check.
All needed changes and updates complete? Check.
Continuity and timeline issues fixed? Check.

Now to finish the damn thing already. And I’m nervous as hell. I kinda sorta know how to finish the novel? Maybe?

This feels very similar to sixteen years ago when I finished The Balance of Light after a nearly four year hiatus. It’s not a block so much as there are a lot of moving parts that I need to weave together in a coherent and believable fashion, and I’m a bit nervous about nailing the landing. After all, I’ve never written a story like this before so this is all kind of new and I want to do it right the first time.

I’ll be honest, though — I’m not the least bit worried about hitting any deadlines, because it’ll get done when it gets done. By the time I’m nearing the finish line with my stories, my pace is even and deliberate. I trust my instincts to know when and how to write the final sentence. [And as an aside, to answer the question of how do I know when I’m finished?: I tend to go with an open-ended denouement scene as those are my favorites. This story ends here, but there’s always another new and different one just around the corner. It provides a needed finality for the character and the story (and the reader), but with a reminder that life now and in the future remains in constant motion.]

If I had to guess, I’d say there’s at least five to ten more chapters left. We’re pretty much at the climax of the storyline, I just need to crest that wave and ride it to completion. And since I’ve never written what is essentially a space opera (at least my version of one) before, there’s certainly a lot of unique worldbuilding I have to keep in mind while gathering all the story threads together. It’s deliberately messy and chaotic, but it also has its own deliberate logic that runs throughout the novel. It’s a war story as seen from the standpoint of civilians instead of soldiers (although soldiers — or in this case, pilots — have a major role). It’s more about the war that takes place between citizens and those in charge than it is about the enemy rushing the front lines.

How will this play out in the next couple of months? Who knows? But I certainly hope I’ll be able to pull it off!

Remain calm

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I’ve been posting here only once a week these days, for varying reasons. The main one is that I’ve been acclimating to the new shop I transferred to (new location, new bosses, new coworkers, new responsibilities, more hours, the really early start on my bookkeeping days), but at this point I think I’m comfortable enough not to worry much about that now.

As it stands, I feel like I’m finally acting my age. I mean, considering that I’m in my mid-fifties now, I see no need to be racing hither and yon every waking moment. [This transfer is indirectly involved in that, in which I no longer feel I need to be on top of everything out of necessity; I have a team that picks up what I can’t and I don’t need to twist anyone’s arm to make that happen.] I can slow down a bit and go at a leisurely pace. I don’t have to be so damned active every waking moment if I don’t want to. And it’s been so much healthier that way.

I think I finally get the real meaning behind John Lennon’s “No longer riding on the merry-go-round, I just had to let it go” lyric.

Not that I’m resigning myself to sitting around doing nothing, far from it. Just going at my own pace. I’m still looking forward to my other creative outlets once Theadia is done. Will I share it here on the blog? Most likely, yes, in part or at least with some decent amount of watermarking involved to avoid those pesky stealing LLMs. [Not that I expect my output to be works of brilliance, but you can’t be too paranoid about robotkind, heh.]

But yeah, life is better these days now that I’ve chosen to go at my own pace.

Getting there

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I’ve still got a long way to go before Theadia is finished and let out into the wild, and right now the last thing on my mind is a deadline. I mean, I’d like to see it out at some point this year, but I’m not going to push it if it ain’t gonna move any faster. I’ve always pictured the writing process of this project as similar to the Bridgetown Trilogy, in that I’d keep up with it but I would never actually rush it at any point. It would get done when it got done.

There’s also the fact that I’m also purposely seeing this as…well, not a final project, but a last one before I put my writing aside for a little while. Which is kind of ironic, considering that I’d conceived it at one of the most stressful times of my life when I’d come to a crossroads and had no idea where I was going next, both personally and creatively. It began in desperation and ends in peace. In a way, that’s one of the themes of the book, which is why it’s taking so long: this is not a theme that’s easy to write, especially when one of the plot lines is the build-up to a possible galactic war. Everything has to unfold just right or it won’t work.

Does this come across as final? Maybe? I’m not really seeing it that way, to be honest. There’s definitely no finality in this decision of mine to step away from writing for a bit. If a story idea resonates with me enough, then sure, I’ll give it a go.

I merely want to see what other creative outlet resonates with me at this time in my life, is all.

Expression

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Expanding on last week’s post about changing focus on my creative outlets, I’ve been thinking about why this decision has been resonating with me so much lately.

I could say that, like any other author, I feel like sometimes I don’t quite get my point across with my writing. I get close, but I don’t quite nail the landing, and it bothers me when it happens. It feels like I phoned it in just to get the damn thing finished. I know I’ve felt that way with pretty much all my stories to some extent. Still, that’s no reason for me to give up on writing, even temporarily. It’s got to be more than that.

Perhaps it’s that I’ve been using written words to express myself for so long, that I’m better at writing it out than I am trying to speak it sometimes. I trip over my words all the time, have linguistic brain-farts and forget what point I was trying to make, and get easily sidetracked if someone interrupts me. [This makes a lot of sense, as I always feel a sense of deep irritation when that last one happens.] Ask me to write something out for you, however? I’ll write you goddamn piece of art. Heh.

And all this got me thinking about how I used to express myself with music and art, especially in the early 90s during my college days. I was full of song ideas and comic drawings that spilled out into my notebooks, often as that ‘secondary focus’ while I was in class. It’s where I wrote some of my best lyrics for The Flying Bohemians and drew nearly all of my Murph strips and drawings. Both of those projects weren’t just doodles, either; I had some detailed plans for both the music and the comic, and the only reason I never followed through on either one was because I felt I’d started too late and didn’t stand a chance to catch up with most of my more creative classmates. To them I was just some idiot who wasn’t alternative enough and wanted to jump on the bandwagon. Or at least that’s how I felt they saw me, at any rate.

But here I am, years later and knowing a hell of a lot better. I’ve achieved my writing goals multiple times over the last ten years, and I’m pretty damn proud of that. And more importantly, that my age and the level I start at doesn’t mean jack shit. It’s that I do it at all.

I think I started realizing that some years ago when I bought myself an higher-end yet affordable digital camera and started experimenting, and realized it again when I started doing my own book covers. I’d taken a lot of pictures with my phones, sure, but there was something about playing with this visual medium that intrigued me. Even if it was taking simple pictures then processing them through things like PicMonkey and Affinity — always kinda-sorta knowing what I was doing, but leaning heavily on creative instinct — this outlet resonated with me. I’m only slightly annoyed that I let that one fall by the wayside for a while as well.

This is why I’ve been thinking — why not revisit these outlets? Pick up where I left off? See what comes of them?

Perhaps it’s time to discover a new way of expressing my creativity.