Category: On Writing

Doin’ a Whole Lotta Nothin’

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doing nothing
doot doot just sitting around

I had a vague plan that I’d do a bit of writing on the weekend, even if it was just a page or so.  I figured we’d go out, spend the day at Disneyland, have our fun, and then we’d get back to the hotel and I’d do some work.  I even packed the Apartment Complex story notebook.  If I wasn’t doing my daily words or my blog posts or anything else, I’d at least do something.  Right?

Yeah, we all know how that was going to go, even before we boarded the plane down to Orange County.  Heh.  I didn’t do a damn thing.  I didn’t even take it out of my bag.

But you know, I’m okay with that!  I’ve finally made peace with the fact that I’m due a few days off now and again.  I’d been writing for eleven days straight on not just that project, but on daily words, scheduled blogs, and whatever else I’ve been working on — on top of the Day Job.  But that’s not why I took the days off.  I wasn’t exactly exhausted mentally or physically.  I could have easily kept going with it if I wanted.  And the moment I admit to myself that I should take days off, I’m going to abuse that and not get anything done on time.

No, this was basically to accept that part of the process of writing is not writing.  I’ve gotta let myself just think about the story instead of trying to bleed it out of my brain.  I can instead listen to an album on the flight (The Sound of Arrows’ Stay Free, if you’re playing along) and think not about the story but about the characters in general.

That said, physically I’m still exhausted from the 8.6 miles we walked on Saturday and 7.7 miles on Sunday (plus the two today, thanks to travel through airports and whatnot), but mentally I’m ready to go come Tuesday.  Everything will be back to normal.

So yeah, I’m not too worried about not missing out on writing this past weekend.

PS – This seemed to be a perfect song for this post. It’s also a melody that keeps on popping into my head while writing the Apartment Complex story.

Sometimes changing it up works too.

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pbc impulse
Source: Polar Bear Café.

The last few days at the Day Job have been ridiculously busy for some reason, and it’s all I could do to juggle that with my writing.  I’ve been using my work breaks and the occasional slow moment to get some daily words or revision or blog entries done.  (As it happens, I’m writing this during my afternoon break on Thursday.)  It seems that right off the bat my Day Job wants to scupper all my Best Laid Plans.

Well, not this time.

Instead of saying hell with it and chalking it up as another lost day, I’m going in the exact opposite direction.  Easier said than done, of course, but it can be done if I put my mind to it.

One thing I noticed was that trying to write longhand during the day wasn’t quite working out, as it was too much of a mental whiplash from the number crunching I get paid for.  So that’s been moved to the evening, and my former evening work — the final revision of Lidwells — was moved to the afternoons.  I saw a huge improvement almost immediately on both projects, as I don’t need as much concentration for revision as I do for writing new prose.  I may change it back once things settle down, but we shall see.

And as for the blogging and the daily words and whatnot…well, those are still floating around under the banner of ‘whenever I happen to have a few spare minutes’.  Sometimes I’ll write these during those slow Day Job moments, sometimes I’ll squeeze them in just before I start my evening work.  But they’re getting done regardless.

Point being, I’ve learned — remembered, really — that sometimes I have to get a little creative if I want to Write All The Things.  I say ‘remember’ because this is the exact process I used during the Belfry years.  Now as then, it’s a matter of committing myself to it and carving out the time.  If that means sneaking in a quick 300-word blog post during office hours, I’m fine with that.  That work email can wait another fifteen minutes before I get back to it.  I consider this a brief and healthy mental distraction so I can get back to Day Job work with a bit more clarity.

Looking Forward to 2018

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bleach fireworks
Credit: Bleach

I’ve got a busy 2018 ahead of me, that’s for sure.

A good busy, though.  I’ve given myself a lot of goals to hit, and I’m sure I can hit most if not all of them.  A few will be harder than others.  Some will most likely roll into 2019.  A majority of them will take most of the year.  And I’ll be juggling it all with the Day Job, of course.  But I think I can pull it off.

The trick here is to have a long-term schedule going, which I’ve been playing around with over the last few days.  It’s a little like how I write novels: multiple threads going at the same time, fully aware of how to orchestrate them, put them in order, and make them flow.  It’s only taken me how long to figure out that I can (and should) do this with the non-writing part of my writing career?  Sheesh.

Anyway…I’ve got a novel to prep for self-publishing (Meet the Lidwells!), a new novel to start writing (untitled Apartment Complex story) and one, maybe two others to outline when I have the time.  I’ll be going to three conventions, with the plan of being on a few panels and possibly a few readings.  I’ll be resuming my photography for book cover and image library purposes.  I desperately need to do restart the document scanning (it’s something I’ve put off for far too long).  I’d like to record some more mp3 demos, maybe pull them together into full completed tracks.  And most importantly, I need to move forward with the Mendaihu Press entity, using it as an umbrella for both my self-published novels and cover artwork.

This is going to be a very complex symphony to orchestrate, and I’m quite sure I’ll hit all the typical obstacles along the way, but I’m in it for the long haul and I’m too stubborn to quit easily.

This coming year is going to be one hell of a challenge for me, but I’m looking forward to it nonetheless.

An overview of 2017

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img_20171221_1548508657809012133565527.jpg
The Bridgetown Trilogy — finally DONE.

It’s been an interesting year, I’ll say that much.  Personally we’ve all had one hell of a bumpy ride.  I’ve certainly had my highs and lows.  And somehow I persevered.

Anyway, looking back over the past twelve months, I’m proud to say I went a hell of a lot further in my writing career than I ever thought I would.  A project that I started in all seriousness twenty years ago was finally signed off as complete.  I started not one but two completely new projects and sowed the seed for even more ideas.  I kept a solid blogging schedule.  I took part in panels on two different local science fiction conventions.  All while still holding a Day Job.

—The Balance of Light e-book and trade release, and completing a long-term project.  That was the toughest of the three to revise, so it took me most of 2016 and early 2017 to finish.  Even the cover was a bear to get right.  But at the same time, overcoming the hurdles I faced on this one made me an even better writer; it taught me to take all the time I needed to get it right before I released it upon the world.  It was worth the wait, as that book went from the Troublemaker for a good few years to a novel I’m proud of.  And added to that, it truly did feel like a weight lifted off my shoulders when I realized I did not need to work on that project any longer.  I still miss it, of course, but I’m definitely glad it’s done.  Most importantly, I saw a very long-standing goal to its conclusion and I couldn’t be happier.

–Daily words at 750words.com.  I’ve been quite consistent with this as well, much more so than previous years.  I trained myself to use this site as a place for playing around with ideas instead of trying to force myself to use prompts (suggested or otherwise).  I just went with whatever popped into mind.  In 2015 and 2016 I used it to write an extremely rough and incomplete draft of Meet the Lidwells, and in 2017 I used it to plot out most of the project after that.  I’ve taken this month off from it for various reasons, but I’ll be picking it up again come January.

—Meet the Lidwells!  This one surpassed all of my expectations, to be honest…so much so that I spent the first half of the project questioning whether or not I was doing it right!  This project hit a lot of goals: writing a complete outline ahead of time, writing a shorter novel, writing a story that had a personal connection (music), and writing in a minimal amount of time.  Because of this I have a minimal amount of post-writing work to do: some minor revision, shooting the cover picture, and prepping it for self-publication.  Quite possibly the shortest novel project I’ve had to date.

–Untitled ‘Apartment Complex’ story.  Having written out a few key scenes and plot ideas for this story using 750Words, I’m now working on the outline in the same manner that I did MtL.  That way when MtL drops, I can immediately focus on writing this one. This too has goals: to see if I can pull off ‘writing econo’ again.  I’m using the same process as the previous project, to the extent that I’ll play around with ideas on the project after this one for my daily words.

–Consistent blogging.  I wrote two different blogs twice a week for nearly the whole year, with very few lapses.  There were moments when it was tough, given that I always wanted to write something of interest and/or purpose, and did my best to avoid the fly-by entries as much as I could.  I also wanted to avoid repeating myself whenever possible; I’ll totally cop to writing the same damn nostalgia piece over and over, and I’m doing my best to break out of that rut.  And in the process, I’m learning how to expand my palette by expanding my interests.

–Participating in Convention Panels.  This was another big one for me.  I’ve gone to a number of cons over the years but always as an audience member, but never as a participant.  After releasing my books I knew that this would be a great way for me to get connected to the non-writing part of the business.  [Mind you, my very first panel was a reading, which went over well but I think could have been better.  Once I got past that first one, the jitters were no longer there.]  In 2018 I’ll be attending three more cons, and I’ve signed up as a participant at all three.

*

All told, I’m ecstatic with what I achieved as a writer in 2017.  It was an extremely productive and fruitful beginning to my career as a professional self-publisher.  There are some goals I wish I’d have hit, but I’m not going to let that bother me.  I’m definitely looking forward to reaching those plus many new ones.

Without people you’re nothing

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joe strummer quote

So.

It looks like Patreon turned itself around and said ‘we done fucked up’, and decided not to follow through with the fee changes.  Which is a good thing.

Doug Jones barely eked by with a win in Alabama, and won it fair and square with just enough that an automatic recount won’t happen…and Roy Moore refuses to concede.

Now we have the FCC voting among party lines yesterday to kill Net Neutrality.

It’s been that sort of week.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how the Republicans have been voting in lockstep for nearly all the least wanted, horribly written, barely thought out bills and resolutions.  I start wondering if they have an endgame here, if there’s some Big Reveal that’s going to happen in Act III that’s going to explain just what the flying fuck they’re attempting to do.  Or is it just going to stop mid-sentence with no resolution?  Have they even made an outline to this book of theirs?

[Don’t get me wrong — it’s not that I hate the party.  If they want to have an intelligent conversation and work in tandem with (if not alongside) the Democrats, then I have no problem with that.  But this past year has been one incompetent shitshow after another from them, and they’re really not selling me on their brand of governing.  Especially when they’re literally targeting my parents, my family, my neighbors, and my friends with their unabashed hatefulness and ignorance.  And me, with the Net Neutrality repeal bullshit.  And being pretty fucking brazen about it at that.]

But what I’ve also been thinking about, a lot, has been community.

I’ve already tweeted and blogged about that Jane Jacobs book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, but more to the point I’ve been thinking a lot about community in general.  I used to think of community service (I’m talking here about donating your time and services because you want to, not the court-assigned version) as a good thing to do, though for years I thought it really wasn’t my bag.  Let’s face it, at the time I was either lazy or selfish, both, felt it was expected of me or that I was guilted into it; it was rarely of my own volition.

The idea of community ties in with my new novel project; in fact, the idea of community service is a subplot for a few of the characters.  Not to worry, I’m not planning on doing any soapboxing here.  It’s just part of the overall story.  In fact, it’s more about embracing the fact that there are other people out there in one’s immediate vicinity than your family or significant other.  Acknowledging that they’re there, that they may be different from you in some ways, but just the same in others.

Community can’t happen if you choose to ignore or exclude people.  Sure, you can paint it in patriotic colors and all, but those colors are going to fade if all you want in your community is People Just Like You, and leave out the Other.  Even and especially if you try to paint it as ‘personal freedom’.  Community doesn’t work that way.

So what does this have to do with writing, anyway?  Why am I bloviating about this here?  Well, a) because it’s my blog and I can do so if I want (neener neener pthththbbt!), and b) the public’s reaction to these hateful shenanigans has been absolutely amazing.  The overwhelming response has been one of true community — bringing all kinds of people together, often in breathtakingly high numbers, to counteract the hate and the ignorance.  I see amazing numbers fighting back.  And even winning.  I join in when I can and how I can, and in the process I realize I’ve not been reacting as with feelings of doom and sorrow as much as I used to.  It’s more irritation and annoyance now, and I can work better with those.  Because that feeling of community.

And in the process it’s given me a clearer way to get through my day, to get through my creative endeavors without feeling useless.  And it’s inspired me to think more about how I create my characters; who I base them on, where they come from, who they are, what they do.  A vibrant community of all different kinds opens up not just different cultural ideas but different points of view.  And that’s what a good novel always needs.

 

On Writing: Unexpected Ideas

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puella magica homura
Homura Akemi from Madoka Magica

I’ll say this: pay attention when ideas pop up, even if they’re weird and unexpected.  Especially when they’re unexpected.

A few weeks back I was listening to the new live album from Jeff Lynne’s ELO (Wembley Or Bust — it’s quite excellent and contains a lot of ELO classics old and new) when their take on “Xanadu” came on.  I remember being a big fan of that movie as a nine-year-old kid.  It wasn’t just the music that captivated me — I was a fan of the band even then — but I was intrigued by its fantasy elements, of muses come alive.

Amusingly, it occurred to me that it would be quite fascinating to see an update/rewrite of Xanadu as a Magical Girl story.  And then I riffed on that a little: ELO’s next album after that was the cult classic Time, a time-travel concept album which also happens to contain the track “Twilight” (known in anime circles as the track used in the DAICON IV film).  Somehow that album would tie in as well.  I shared that as a tweet and didn’t think too much about it after that.

A few weeks later, and the idea is still stuck in my head, and I think I might be able to do something with it.

I thought about it some: a magical girl sent back in time (Time) to save the world somehow, or at least change someone’s fate (Xanadu).  She realizes she’s stuck in that time stream and can’t escape (Time) and has to come to terms with her own fate (Xanadu).  She changes the lives of a few certain people by teaming up with them (Xanadu) though she’s afraid she can’t completely connect with them (Xanadu, Time).  In the end she’s changed the world, or at least someone’s fate (Xanadu) and is finally able to transcend the time stream to return temporarily (Time).

Of course, I’m omitting the rollerskating and the musical interludes, but still…I’m a bit surprised at how easily this came together.  I’m still not sure if I’m going to follow through with it, but the temptation sure is great.

So yeah…pay attention to those ideas when they come up unexpectedly.  You just might have your next story!

Post-Thanksgiving Haze

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Luffy eating
This may have been me yesterday.

D’OH!  I seem to have completely forgotten to write and schedule a post for today.  It’s been such a weird week that it completely slipped my mind.  And being that it’s (hopefully) going to be a quiet day here at the Day Job, hopefully I can take care of other things that slipped my mind and/or didn’t have time for.

Such as making some headway on the Apartment Complex story outline.  I finished the initial revision run-through for Meet the Lidwells just the other day, and I’m letting it simmer for a few days before I go through it one more time…so this is the perfect time to kickstart that next project.  [I do need to futz with the MtL cover some more, but I think I’ll do that on the weekend when I have more time and space to breathe.  I know what I want, I’m just having a hell of a time trying not to make it look like it’s a craptacular botch job finished in five minutes on Photoshop.]

I’m hoping things quiet down on the Day Job from here on in so I can a) relax a bit, and b) sneak in some writing work if needed.  Things usually do start winding down post-Thanksgiving (with one last short burst in late December), so this is when I get to unwind and not have to stress out about all that much.  And I am so looking forward to that!

On Writing and Stylistic Moods

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anime snowing gif

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my recent new projects, and how much lighter and more positive they are in terms of mood and setting.  Not filled with Shiny Happy People, mind you, but neither have I filled them with Miserable Wretches.  I’m quite sure this is a personal emotional and mental reaction to things going on In Real Life, but I’m fascinated by this decision nonetheless.

The Infamous War Novel was written a) when I was a moody-ass teenager and b) during the last few years of the Cold War in the 80s, so you can well imagine how much of a funfest that book would have been.  Several of my trunked stories from that era and up to the late 90s were written during my high school, college and post-college years when was trying to figure out who the hell I was and what I wanted to do with my life.  So a lot of Gen-X whinging going on there.

It wasn’t until the project that became the Bridgetown Trilogy that I forced myself out of that rut and made it a point not to write purely as a reaction to Real Life Stuff.

In a way, though, I haven’t really shaken that off, not completely.  I know I’m not the only writer who’s done this.  Put it this way: I’m nerely making it a point not to write something pessimistic or grimdark, because that’s not where I want to be right now.  I want to write stories that are more positive in some way, to balance that out.  Granted, I’m certainly not writing Teletubbies-level harmlessness in reactive response, either.

Meet the Lidwells was an exercise in writing something purely for the fun of it, and for someone to read for the same reason, and I think I’ve pulled it off.  There are serious moments in that story, but they’re not High Drama.  It’s about the evolution of a band, as well as a family, as they grow from teens to adults.

The next project — the Apartment Complex story — is along the same lines.  There’s a reason I’ve been describing it as my Studio Ghibli story; the style is not just about the physical action, but also about the evolution of lives.

It’s kind of hard to describe, because it’s not exactly an American style of storytelling; it’s more inspired by Asian fiction than American.  There’s a kind of poetry to this style, where your focus on the physical movement of people is just as important as the movement their internal changes — spiritual, mental and emotional.  The pace of the story slows down a little, causing you to pay more attention to the details.

Will I pull this style off?  That’s a good question.  I’ve read so many books of this style over the last ten or so years that I think I have an understanding of how it works.  I hope I pull it off, and I hope you’ll enjoy it.

 

 

 

 

Writing During Q4

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anime yawning
I feel your pain, kid.

It’s that time of year again, I see.  When the Day Job teeters between being completely dead and boring to being so insanely busy I lose all track of time.  While I’m thankful that I’m no longer working in retail (or in a warehouse, or on a phone branch) during Q4, the bipolar quality of the job still tends to drive me crazy sometimes.  I never quite know whether it’s going to be one or the other until the day comes.

With my current Day Job, I’ve firmly stood by my rule: I do not think about the Day Job once I clock out for the day.  What if I still have outstanding work to do?  Don’t care.  What if I — DO. NOT. CARE.  It has nothing to do with how I feel about the job.  It’s got everything to do with maintaining sanity and energy for things other than Day Jobbery.

It’s the only way I can deal with the sheer volume when and if it comes.  I work in first-in-first-out fashion on cases that come my way — even and especially if they’re labelled as OMG requests.  These are most often the ones dumped on us at last minute, usually because the requester has forgotten to forward it to us two months ago.  The only ones I’ll drop everything for are critical escalations (and even then I tend to be a bit cynical when they’re labeled such, because sometimes they’re really not).

All this is so I still have that reserve of energy at the end of the day to work on my writing.  You know how I get when I miss a day due to circumstances beyond my control…I get irritable and cranky.  So even if my beloved writing time is spent working on minutiae or revision or low-level preparation for an upcoming project, I’ll at least have gotten that much further.

With this particular Day Job, I have a very vague idea of when it gets superbusy:  mid-month (a few clients send big monthly files then), close to month-end (clients trying to make their metrics), and end-of-quarter (tax season).  And I know that once the last few weeks of December roll around, it’s mostly about wrapping things up, finishing off outstanding queries, and taking it easy for a bit until mid-January.

That’s the trick, at least for me: having at least a vague idea of what to expect on the Day Job over the course of the month, so I can plan accordingly.  [Sure, I’ll be the first to admit that I’ll spend the first of those quiet, dead days by goofing off.  I figure I’ve earned a bit of a respite, though!]  It’s the only way I can keep up with my writing schedule without tiring myself out to the point of exhaustion or illness.

It’s not ideal, but hey, it’s a paycheck, and I’m willing to work around it.

 

 

 

Keeping Metrics

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anime-flipping-pages-notebook-animated-gif

I have a small calendar notebook on my desk that I update on a daily basis; it’s where I log my word counts, blog entries, journal entries, and anything else creative.  It’s something I’ve done off and on for years since the Belfry days.  There’s no real reason for it other than I’m curious to see how much work I’ve done over the course of a certain stretch of time.

I do this because, like most creatives, I feel like I barely get anything done on any given day!  This logging of work actually gives me a little dose of reality to combat that.  I may grouse that I only got four hundred words done on a novel project (I’m not happy unless I get at least 500), but when I look at the day’s progress, I see that I’ve also written 800 words on the 750Words.com site relating to another project, maybe a few hundred words on writing blog post that’s not due until next week (like this one, for instance) plus a few hundred more for a music blog post, and cleaned up emails.  And maybe noodled around on my guitar for a bit as well.

And it all adds up, because I’m pretty consistent about it.  Hitting 500-600 novel words nearly every day for six months got me finishing Meet the Lidwells in record time.  And with all those outtakes and notes on the 750, I’ve got a serious amount of worldbuilding done for the Next Project already.

So yeah.  Sometimes I need a slap upside the head to show that I’m doing a ton of work, it’s just spread out over five or six different things.