Tag: creativity

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.

Another day…

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From my Dreamwidth account on the 5th:

I’ve been feeling frustrated lately with my creative endeavors…or more to the point, the lack thereof.

I mean, I should be excited about working on Theadia, now that I’ve got a clearer idea of what I want to do with it. I should be excited about all of it: doing the daily words, the drawing, the music, like I have in the past because it’s something I’ve always enjoyed doing. But somehow, at some point, I just…stopped. I know it was a mix of things: real life/day job stress, mental exhaustion, emotional exhaustion, internet distraction, music library obsession, comic reading obsession, and maybe even just a bit of Getting Older. I’ll allow myself days off when I need to rest, of course (something I often forgot to do during the Belfry Years), but I’ve really let myself go these days, and I hate that feeling.

I seem stuck in the Preparation Phase yet never following through. I’ll think about writing or drawing or whatever but never actually do it. I don’t think this is the same as the Boston Years when I was just starting out. That was a different approach: that was me learning how to focus, but it was also my way of avoiding an emotional spiral given the financial situation I was in.

This is pure distraction, plain and simple.

So the last couple of days I’ve been trying to restart it all. I’m deliberately not trying to do it all at once, because then it all starts feeling like High School Homework Due Tomorrow That I Should Have Completed Three Days Ago. I’m restarting it gradually instead. Making those mixtapes I haven’t made in a couple of years. Posting at the blogs when I have the time and something interesting to talk about. Popping onto 750 Words when I feel like working out a story idea. Journaling when the thought strikes me and the notebook is at hand. Eventually I’ll fire up Word and start working on Theadia again, maybe even playing around with Decline and Fall on the 750. And on my days off I’ll pick up the guitar and play a tune or two just for the hell of it.

I don’t think I need to rigidly plan all of this, but I think I should at least make a more concerted effort to meet my own expectations. If I’m doing one of my morning shifts at the day job, I have more than enough time to work on something in the afternoon. Same with the midshifts: I have at least four or so hours before I need to go in. I need to be better at acting on that urge to create instead of distracting myself.

…and again on the 7th:

I’m making good on my previous entry about just doing what I can do creatively and not worrying about doing all the things. Interestingly a reel popped up in my Facebook feed that made a lot of sense to me in regards to all of this — it’s not so much laziness that’s causing this procrastination but a mental ‘safety’ response. Somewhere along the line my Mental To-Do List started feeling overwhelming, but not because there were a lot of things there; it was that somehow I’d gotten into the habit of ‘things I must do soon’ = ‘must avoid this to retain my sanity’ with a sprinkle of ‘oh hey this fun distraction (music library, webcomics, social media) is a lot less mentally taxing, let’s focus on that instead’.

The fascinating thing is that I understand this, and I’ve ALWAYS understood this, and it rarely ever bothered me in the past…so why now?

I think part of it was the ongoing stress of the day job before I got my transfer, along with some other personal and real life stuff going on that just dogpiled on me over the last couple of years, and I got sloppy about letting it get to me so easily.

That’s not to say everything is magically fixed, of course. More that I have a better understanding of it all now, and I’m more aware of how I can navigate this going forward.

*

It is interesting how this kind of thing can completely derail your life. You’d expect some kind of high-level action like a life-altering event, or a financial struggle, or whatever, to be the culprit, but sometimes it’s just a bunch of small things piling up and a bad day where you just can’t be arsed to keep it together. Next thing you know you just want to enjoy life as sedentarily as possible because that feels better mentally and emotionally.

I’ve recently read about ‘bed rotting’ from somewhere online, just spending the day in bed like you’re an 80’s Morrissey and would rather avoid the world instead of fighting it. It’s not a new thing, even though it’s got a new name. I used to do that in my high school years. It was my own ‘safety’ response, and somewhere along the line I added ‘listening to music’ to that, and that inspired writing songs and poems soon after. And eventually that grew to writing fiction. And I stuck with that for decades, because that’s what worked best for me.

Which is why in 2020 at the start of the pandemic and my unemployed years, I decided I wanted — no, I needed to deconstruct all that. Sometime in the late 10s I’d started feeling as though I was repeating myself. Writing the same lyrics and poems and journals, visiting the same memories, writing the same words, to the point that I felt that I had nothing new to say. So I chose to not write for a while and focus on more personal things that I’d been avoiding.

But here we are in 2026, those formerly avoided things have pretty much been taken care of. It doesn’t so much feel like a clean slate this time as it’s more like raw skin after a long stretch of healing. It feels different and weird and I’m not entirely sure if I can recreate what used to be. Or if I even want to recreate any of it. Some of it, sure — the daily regimen that kept me going all that time, for instance — but I don’t want to return to the same habits and themes and thoughts.

Long story short, that’s where I am right now. It’s not a bad place to be, per se…I’m merely feeling a little impatient at the moment. The only thing left for me is to move forward. I shouldn’t have to mentally plan it all out like I might have in the past, though…sometimes I just have to let the day come and see where it takes me. Eventually a new creative endeavor will appear. Whether it’ll be something I’ve done in the past or something completely new, I’m not going to guess.

*

“Harry, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Everyday, once a day, give yourself a present. Don’t plan it, don’t wait for it. Just let it happen. It could be a new shirt at the Men’s store. A catnap in your office chair. Or two cups of good, hot black coffee.” — Agent Dale Cooper, Twin Peaks

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.

What if…?

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The other day while I was working on Theadia I got to thinking: what if I just…stopped writing for a while? I mean, not because I’m stressed out. or emotionally exhausted. or out of ideas. or held down by Real Life Issues or any other external reasons. It’s not as if I’m getting sick of it or feel I can’t hack it anymore.

Or to clarify the question: what if I choose to select a different creative output to be my primary focus at this point in my life?

You all know that I’ve always been drawn to the triad of writing, music and art. Three things I’ve always been interested in and loved in equal measure. But it was writing that took the driver’s seat, way back in the 80s. The bug hit me hard when I started writing the Infamous War Novel as a teenager and I just kept working at it for decades, and, well…here I am. Seven self-published books with an eighth one on the way.

And it seems that, somewhere in the back of my head, I’ve decided that I truly want to immerse myself in music again. I mean, I’m already far past immersion when it comes to listening, collecting and having my creative output inspired/influenced by it; it’s more of a clinical obsession at this point. But I’ve always kept the musical creative output at a distance these last two decades, leaving it as merely a hobby. I’ve learned enough to be Not That Bad (still with a lot of room for improvement), but in the last several years, there’s been that itch.

An itch that I want to know a bit more. To expand on my musical curiosities and see where it takes me. To finally learn how to home-record music without spending a fuckton of money doing it. I don’t even want to be a guitarists with multiple axes; I just want to try being some kind of quirky indie one-person project you find on Bandcamp. [Hell, I already have a name for it that A and I came up with ages ago: Drunken Owl.]

Mind you, this does not mean completely giving up the writing. I don’t think I’d be able to do that, anyway. It just wouldn’t be my everyday creative outlet like it is now. For a while.

Allowing those other creative avenues to open up wide and shine certainly sounds tempting to me these days.

It’s Inktober time!

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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!

A creativity rethink

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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.

Theadia and…Knitting?

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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.]

On being unconventional

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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.