It’s been a few years since I’ve actively joined in the fun with this! I’ve got the time, my plate is relatively well organized (if not always clear), and I’m not in the middle of some sort of major project or personal crisis or whatever has kept me from it in the past.
That’s how I’m going to focus on it this year: have fun with it! I’m not out to prove anything, I really shouldn’t try to aim for perfection with every single prompt. Just draw whatever comes to mind. It could be the first image that pops up in my brain, or it could be a ridiculous pun or a music reference (I mean, #16 just begs to be full of flannel shirts). Don’t think to hard, just have fun.
And that’s something I need to remind myself of more often!
No, I don’t plan on giving up this writing gig anytime soon. I’m seven books in, one I’m currently working on and a few future ideas on the back burner, and I have no plans on letting them fall by the wayside.
I’ve been thinking — again — about other creative outlets lately. More to the point, how I haven’t allowed myself to give them any proper focus and practice to be anything other than passing hobbies. I’ve often said my other two creative outlets would be art and music, but I’ve spent so long working on writing novels that I rarely ever have time for either of them.
Why is that? Well, part of it has been just not allowing myself the time. Balancing the novel writing and the Day Job (and spending some time IRL with A.) often leaves me with very little time to do anything else. I still have a habit of carrying a notebook with me at all times so I could easily spend a few moments doodling. I have enough time outside of the Day Job that I can pick up my guitar and noodle for a bit. And I’m better at both than I used to be just ten years ago.
What’s stopping me? I think it’s that my creative brain gets stuck on the ‘well, you’re not bad, but there’s at least 9,000 more hours of practice and experience before you’ll be good‘ and I put it aside for a later time. And that later time keeps getting pushed further into the future.
I think I’m perhaps also a little daunted by seeing so many musicians and artists relying on computer software nowadays, and simply I don’t have the money to spend or the PC memory to eat up (or the desk space, for that matter) for it right now. And then I start thinking that maybe my art and music should remain a hobby.
But if I’m going to take either of them more seriously, I realize what I should do is take the same route I did with my writing: Do It Yourself.
I mean, my inspiration for having a DIY writing career is based on music, so I’ve got the knowledge to go that route anytime I want, right? Why should I worry about trying to learn the technology when I have the Beatle-based inspiration of pushing a button, saying ‘oh hey this sounds neat’ and running with it? I’m not a synthpop based performer that needs all the doowackies; Drunken Owl is more something you’d hear on Slumberland Records than a hipster indie label, and would be right at home on Bandcamp.
As for art? Who knows what would come of that. A webcomic? Storyboarding? Something else? And as for photography, I really just need to give myself the time to properly edit the pictures and make them saleable on stock footage sites like Shutterstock.
The net is vast and infinite, as Major Kusanagi says. I just have to make the time to explore it.
It was supposed to be a one-off joke that most likely wouldn’t have made it into the finished version, but somehow it’s become an all-encompassing theme within this project. And to be honest, I’m totally fine with that because it works perfectly!
Theadia has numerous knitting and crafting references littered throughout. The three main military space ships we see are pins (small one-person fighters that serve as the front lines), needles (two-seaters working as artillery) and stashes (boxy, bulky troop transporters). The main setting is a well-off planet and space station called FairIsle (named after the Shetland island known for its knitting) and the planet’s central capital is Beam City (a weaving tool). And so on.
So why knitting, anyway? Well, originally it was a nod to A’s craft projects — she’s made numerous scarves, fingerless gloves, toys and baby clothes over the years, and that’s her creative outlet while mine has been writing. Something we both enjoy immensely even when we’re doing something else like listening to music or watching TV, or more more recently, even despite the constant and sometimes destructive interruptions of our cats!
The more I leaned on this little in-joke, the more I realized that it was a perfect metaphor for the project itself: every single event is interwoven with something else that happens elsewhere. Whether it’s a character’s refusal to act or another’s fearless action that changes the course of history, their actions are not just about their own world.
Reminding myself that weaving is the main structure of this entire project is what’s helping me in this new revision/rewrite. Whatever new scenes I’m working on have to not just tie in (har har) with the plot in general, but have to, in some way or another, cause or influence a change down the road. So by the time we’re near the end of the story, we have a whole tapestry of events going on about to lead to something unexpected yet extremely important.
Not bad for a one-off joke, yeah?
[EDIT: Yes, I am aware that the header gif I used is actually crocheting and not knitting. It was the one I found online that looked best! Heh.]
I’ve said this before: Theadia is an unconventional hard-SF story. It’s not entirely about the spaceships or the combat or the high levels of tech intelligence. It’s more about the characters that are put into that world, whether they want to be there or not. I’ve also said this before as well: Theadia is about doing the right thing when no one else is bothering. But what it’s not is completely uber-serious or heavy on the military grimdark and the perils of deep space.
I love writing unconventional stories. They appeal to me and my mindset. I mean, come on: I’ve been listening to indie music since the mid 80s. My favorite stories are the ones that don’t go in the direction you expect. I’m a sucker for books and movies where you can tell the writers did their homework in weaving the plots in all sorts of unexpectedly creative ways. It only makes sense that my own writing leans the same way.
While I’ve been talking about how Theadia‘s sprawl is somewhat similar to the Mendaihu Universe, I’d say characterwise it’s more similar to the Meeks sisters in In My Blue World. There’s certainly a huge world out there (in this case a galaxy) but the story is mainly about these main characters I’m writing. I always love the idea of that dichotomy: a tight focus within a larger landscape. To me it gives the background life, and in the process our leads get to act or react accordingly to it.
I suppose this is partly why I’m still an indie author that’s self-publishing rather than going the pro route. I may have once had rose-tinted dreams about getting my novels released by a big name publisher, but the more I thought about it over the years, the more I realized that avenue felt more restrictive to my own creativity. I don’t know how to write commercial fiction, let alone genre fiction that would sell commercially, and I’m not sure if I’d be able to succeed if I managed to learn.
I just write what I enjoy the most, regardless as to whether it’s highly popular or not. And I’m quite happy with taking that unconventional route.
I’ve been reading a few social media or blog posts lately opining how AI has infested many creative fields like invasive critters, taking all the fun and the jobs from those who’ve been in the field for ages doing the actual lo-fi work the hard way.
You can always tell the pro-AI people: they have this weird salesperson optimistic shine to them, telling you how awesome it is to be able to create a novel — a whole freaking novel, even if you’ve never written one before! — just by typing in a few prompts! You can even put in a few more prompts and get a cover! You put in the ideas, the computer does all the hard work! It’s awesome! You’ll have more time for raising more bitcoin!
Oddly enough, they remind me of my worst ever job as a telemarketer at a call center, trying to sell toll-free 800 numbers back in the early 90s. Trying to push something that ninety percent of your targets don’t want, hoping that ten percent will think this is the Best Idea Ever, and you’ve made your sale. [And now you just need to get ten more in the next three hours so you can keep your job.]
It also reminds me of Virtual Reality. Remember that, from the early 90s? It was supposed to be the Next Big Thing then, back with all those crisp images that made the internet under the hood look like an amazing science fictional universe, and we’d all be Johnny Mnemonic with Thompson Eyephones, flying through digital space and opening up files and hacking through firewalls with disembodied computerized hands. Never mind that the real under the hood looked…less so. More 8-bit than CGI, really.
There’s something not entirely real about it all. Not exactly Uncanny Valley unreal, but more like you can definitely tell the difference between the messy and tactile yet endlessly fascinating real world, and the AI world that’s just a tiny bit too shiny and perfect but not quite working to spec in small yet obvious ways.
I’m reasonably sure that this too shall pass, just like VR did, just like those smart glasses and other fiddly bits of hardware that get a huge sales push and vanish a year or so later. They won’t go away, I think…they’ll still have their uses here and there. They just won’t be sold as The Latest Tech Toy You Must Own. The overwhelming reaction of AI art has been a resounding ‘meh’ from most non-tech people anyway, and most artists are pissed off about it for obvious reasons. And as a writer myself? I’m secretly laughing that most AI-created stories are easily spotted, absolutely terrible and lacking any kind of humanity within its pages. We’ll still have a few people trying to make a fast buck by generating a handful of these, but they’re few and far between and they’re not doing as well as they think they are.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve used a few low scale AI art generator websites now and again, just for the fun of it, just to see what it does and what level it’s at. If it wants to stay, I think it still has a long way to go. It might create an eye-catching picture…but with colors slightly too pastel, the smile a bit too Aphex Twin, minor but crucial details completely missing, or perhaps an extra limb or finger bending in strange ways. Plus, it currently takes up a huge fuckton of processing power that’s not healthy for the environment.
We’re still better off going old-school and doing the hard work, even if it does take a bit longer and sometimes costs money, to be honest. The end results are still much more pleasing and long-lasting.
I’ll be honest up front with one thing: knowing me and my utter lack of patience, planning and focus in junior high and high school, I’d probably have used AI to write some if not all of my term papers if it had been around when I was a teenager. I’d have known enough to take the end result and revise it so it sounds more like me than a bot scraping info from the ‘net, but yeah, I would have been that student. I might have been one of the smart kids growing up, but the slow rigidity of school education often bored me.
These days however, the only reasons I’d use online AI bots is as a playground. Create silly mash-up picture memes. See what it can do sonically with music as inspiration for my own. Use it for character worldbuilding, just enough to keep it a private reference but not call it official. I’m not sure if I’d ever use it for writing, per se, because that would just be a) cheating, and b) taking all the fun out of what I love doing. I mean, come on: there’s nothing I love more about writing than working through the bits and bobs and swivels and parallels that go into writing a novel. That’s the best part! Why would I want to let a bot do that??
As is usual with a lot of my takes on various things, my feelings on AI these days is complex and often paradoxical. I love it and hate it. I’m fascinated and repulsed by it. I hope that it isn’t completely eradicated but I also hope that we find ways to tame it. I hope that it doesn’t die out as a fad but I’m pretty sure that, like VR in the early 90s, companies will try to monetize it and it won’t age well in a few years. I hope we don’t get a lot of terrible movies about AI (guaranteed to be about either hackers saving the day or bots taking over the world, as they often are), but I do hope screenwriters come up with clever ways to integrate the AI idea into their stories.
I do hope that the fad of creating full-on novels via AI will go away and stay away, however. I do believe that one won’t last long as most professionals are already calling ‘authors’ out on it. [And I do put that in quotes because come on: are you really a novelist if all you do is type out a few prompts and let a computer do the rest?] We’re near the beginning of this particular wave, so it’ll probably take a little longer for it to fade away, but I just don’t see it becoming anything major once that wave crests and starts to retreat.
Image courtesy of Everything Everywhere All at Once
First of all: the new Michelle Yeoh movie, Everything Everywhere All at Once is coming out in wide release this coming Friday, and I recommend you go see it. It’s absolutely amazing, hilarious, and maybe more than a bit WTF did I just watch, but it’s one of the best films I’ve seen in a while. It’s very hard to describe what it’s about other than that Yeoh’s character is a hard-working and utterly stressed out mom just trying to keep things from falling apart…and things do start falling apart, just not how you’d expect. Just…trust me and go see it.
So. What I meant to say here is that every now and again I’ll see a movie that makes me rethink my own work, whether it’s the style, or the way it unfolds. Often times its unique way of telling a story will inspire me to see my WIPs from a different angle. And, most of all, there are certain films like the above where I can “see the math of it” (as I like to say) — as a writer, I’m intrigued and often blown away by how the filmmakers have used different details, shots, edits, formats, and maybe even colors or angles, to tell the story in a specific way. They’ve allowed me to see how all the different threads of the plot, visuals and dialogue weave together to make a wonderful tapestry. Not every film does that to such a conscious degree, but when they do, those are the ones that have always made me want to run straight home, fire up Word and start writing my own.
When we left the screening of Everything Everywhere there were two things that stuck in my mind: one, I totally want to see this again to pick up everything I missed, and two, I totally want to see this again so I can study it. [Three, if you want to include I love the fact that I just spent half the movie laughing and the other half shaking my head in amused bafflement.] This film was so original and clever with its unraveling of cinematic and literary expectations that you almost don’t notice that it re-ravels them back together in an altogether new and unexpected way.
There aren’t too many films and filmmakers that will achieve that sort of unique creation that will resonate that deeply with me. There are a few anime directors that have done that — Satoshi Kon and Makoto Shinkai are but two — but American filmmakers? Not that many will make that kind of film that will just hit me like that.
And yes, I did in fact work on Theadia after we got home. Heh.
One of the biggest things I’ve learned over the last couple of months with my writing, my photography and pretty much every other creative outlet I’ve been focusing on lately, is that my worst habit is trying to be perfect from the beginning. There’s no such thing, and I really should f***ing stop trying before I drive myself crazy once again trying to achieve it.
When I was first starting out, it took me a while to realize there’s a difference between professionalism and perfection. Professionalism means many things to me: it can take the social meaning, such as having the patience and the ability to listen to others of different levels and work well with them. Maybe not in sync, but at least understand their levels as much as they (hopefully) understand yours. It can also mean physical (so to speak), such as submitting a clean manuscript and prose that sounds like I devoted a considerable amount of time working on it.
The problem is that when I’m not paying attention, my brain starts thinking that such a clean manuscript and tidied-up prose means it’s perfect prose and product. Which is why we writers cringe when we see our completed and published books out in the wild and suddenly that absolutely terrible typo or horrible use of grammar shows up that absolutely no one, not even the editor, caught. We see an imperfection and Everything Is Ruined Forever.
Lately I’ve been thinking of the title of Adorable’s classic shoegaze record, Against Perfection, and I think it fits perfectly with my recent mindset regarding all this. I’m finding that the only way I can combat this urge to make every single creation of mine an absolutely flawless masterpiece is to actively remind myself: go against perfection. Sure, be as professional as you possibly can, but stop it with the f***ing perfectionism already! Life is messy. Life isn’t precise. It’s full of paradoxes, full of mistakes and misdirections. I’m not saying to submit a terrible manuscript: just stop trying to make every single moment in the story perfect.
I can think of dozens of songs by The Beatles that contain all kinds of mistakes, egregious or otherwise (my favorite being in “Hey Jude”, when Paul swears just before the ‘na-na-na’ coda) and people still think they’re one of the most important rock bands in history. They made their songs as professional-sounding as possible, but the imperfections became part of their charm.
So I need to remember every now and again: it’s okay to have a bit of sloppiness, especially during the rough drafts. Tidy them up in revision. Make it sound great! But there’s no reason for me to make every single sentence spotless and clean. [Hell — this blog post isn’t exactly how I wanted it to sound, but I’m not going to delete it. It gets my point across regardless.]
I’ve always wanted to create, ever since I was a kid. I knew early on I wanted to be three things: a writer, an artist, and a musician. Not just one or two of them — I wanted to be all three. It wouldn’t be something I’d learn overnight or through osmosis, of course. These were things I knew would be a lifelong learning experience.
The downside to this was that once I’d shared this dream with others, I was constantly reminded that, American capitalism being what it is, the expectations were super high. [Never mind the fact that whenever I mentioned writing as a kid, adults immediately expected me to follow in my father’s footsteps and become a reporter — which I did not want to do. I knew I wasn’t good at it, and it didn’t intrigue me. My strength is in making up stories.] Most of these expectations were learned by experience and by reading well-meaning advice books and columns: write this kind of fiction, always write in that style, shmooze with these people and you’re in. And in college: read these books, be influenced by that author, be a part of those scenes. I really hated that part of the creative field for a long time, to be honest: being forced into a mold I knew I wouldn’t fit into.
I tend to be the kind of writer who’ll read an article talking about bad things in fiction — prologues, dialogue tags that aren’t “said”, adverbs, whatever — and how I should never use them. Of course, the nonconformist in me (thank you, college radio!) always responded with, well, why not? I would use them anyway, not really to prove them wrong but to prove to myself that they can be used, one just needs to understand how they work to one’s benefit. For example, I play around a lot with unspoken pacing in my work as a subtle way to hint at impatience or exhaustion or whatever other emotion a character is feeling. It’s really fun to do and I’ve learned to pull it off. So I’m always worried that someone will read that scene and say it’s too slow, when I’ve spent a considerable amount of time deliberately making it slow on purpose. I know, it’s not for everyone, but I really enjoy doing it.
Anyway — I’ve been thinking a lot these days about just how much time and effort I need to put into my creativity and make it a strong career choice instead of just a hobby or a side thing. All this week I’ve hit 1000-plus words for all three writing projects, and just the other day I officially started up my Shutterstock portfolio page (it’s sparse at the moment but I’m working on building it up a few days a week). Yes, I’ve taken the plunge and also working on my photography. It’s long been on the backburner and it’s high time I started taking further steps.
That’s been my true motto with my creativity all this time: let’s see how far we can take this. It took me years to understand what I truly meant by that; I didn’t want it to mean ‘mavericky pushing the envelope’ or ‘shock value because I can get away with it’. I wanted that to mean, let’s take this creative outlet and play around with it, mold it into something worth expanding on, and make it a long-game career that I’ll always enjoy and dedicate time to. I did that in the late 90s with my writing. I’ve done it to some degree with my music playing. And now that I’ve realized I have another creative outlet that intrigues and inspires me — close-up nature and landscape photography — that I’d like to expand on. See how far I can take it. I’d like to think I’m pretty good at it to some degree (again, always room for improvement, of course) and I’m willing to take that next step to make it happen.
I call all this a fever dream because it feels like one to me sometimes. Dedicating that much time, energy and brain power to creativity is kind of weird if you think about it because most of the time you’re starting with absolutely nothing and making something out of it. I won’t say it’s “magical” as I so rarely think of it in those terms, but it really is unlike any other day job I’ve ever had. It’s following an idea and having absolutely no idea where it’ll take me, but trusting that I’ll get there if I trust myself.
It’s taken me far too long to get to this point, I’ll admit, but I’m glad I’m there now, and I won’t look at it in terms of regret. I’m here now, so let’s embrace it.
I’ve said numerous times in the past that I’m a visual writer — that is, I tend to see my stories visually and try to write what I’m seeing in my head. Sometimes it works, sometimes it needs a bit of post-writing revision, but either way I try to tell the story in the best way possible.
Meanwhile, as a fun not-entirely-serious project to get back into the habit of drawing again (and maybe, slowly, getting better at it), I’ve decided to storyboard Diwa & Kaffi, which is one of my more visually-created stories. I wrote it fully seeing it as a Studio Ghibli film or a manga tankobon, so it certainly lends itself to that particular format.
The above page is one from page 6-7, just after Diwa and Kaffi have nearly gotten themselves in trouble all while being monitored by their fathers. Below is the text version:
“You’re right,” Samuel said, leaning back against the railing. “That game of theirs is a bit haphazard. It’s a simple game of catch, but it only tests their timing.” “There was no coordination between them whatsoever,” the tintrite huffed. “Agreed,” he said. “but it doesn’t have to be all about coordination, Gray. You watched Diwa navigate the garden almost flawlessly—” “Almost,” Graymar snorted, flashing a quick fang. “It’s about knowing the area,” he continued. “I know for a fact I’d have gone the longer way around the garden and playground and missed the catch entirely.” “You were never good at catch games, Samuel.” Samuel didn’t miss a beat. “You never wanted to play them! Seriously, though…I see potential. They were confident in their surroundings. They’ve been all over this estate for years, they know it backwards and forwards. I’ve seen them both taking a lot of initiative, helping the tenants, and chipping in during our quarterly festivals. They’re old enough to be our interns now. Diwa has been showing interest in the tenancy committee. He’s been active in the last few meetings. I’d be happy to show him the ropes. And he says Kaffi has an interest.” Graymar lifted his snout quickly in response. “Kaffi hasn’t said anything about this to me.” Samuel had expected as much. Graymar’s relationship with his pahyoh – with anyone, come to think of it – sometimes required a lot of patience and understanding. “He’s waiting for the right moment. Ask him, or at least let him know you’re aware of his wishes,” he said. “I’m sure he’ll be interested.” “Hmmm.”
I’m having a LOT of fun with this diversion, so I’m going to continue with it as time and inclination allows! I’m learning while I’m going too, dusting off a lot of my long-ignored film production/theory knowledge while also letting myself enjoy the creative process. It’s helping me visualize the characters better — in my head I can see what Graymar and Kaffi look like as tintrite, but I haven’t quite managed to nail their exact image as closely as I’d like, for instance — and in the process open up a possible new direction with my creativity.
Will anything come of this? I might shop the storyboard version around, or I might turn it into a webcomic, or it may come to naught. But I’m keeping the options open for now!
Welcome to Bridgetown 