Nox

On Tuesday, concerned that my cat was ill, I took her to an emergency veterinarian around midnight. When we got there, though, she seemed okay and we ended up bringing her home.

Except that, over the next few days, she didn't seem to be getting better. So we scheduled an appointment with another vet, figured we'd get all the tests and such done, find out what was wrong, and everything would be okay. We made an appointment for early this morning, around 8 AM.

In three hours, I would learn that my beloved kitty was in dire condition. I would learn that her kidneys were failing her due to a blockage in her bladder. I would learn that the surgery that could have saved her would do nothing for the kidney damage. That things were already too far gone.

Reading Blogs About Blogging Makes Me Want To Write

Are you familiar, sir or madame, are you intimate with a certain fantasy series known as A Song of Ice and Fire? If not, you should probably stop reading, because I highly doubt you care, unless it's your thing to read drunken, poorly thought out rants from undergrads procrastinating on their philosophy essays. If you do like reading such things, well, by all means, please, stay a while.

Stay forever.

Where was I? Oh yes. So, there's this book series. A Song of Ice and Fire. Fun fact; for about five years, I thought it was "A Song of Fire and Ice." You know, like the Robert Frost poem? Five years, and nobody told me I was making an idiot of myself the entire time. Although now I'd argue that I managed to achieve that particular goal in far more entertaining and offensive ways than simply misreading the title of a fantasy book series.

The Difference Between Writer's Block And Being Stuck

I haven't been writing as much as I was several months ago, and the fact that I haven't been is simultaneously both a source of inspiration and consternation for me. On the one hand, any time I start to feel like I'm too busy to write, or life is too frustrating, or whatever, I can tell myself, "hey, asshole, you mowed through 50,000 words in thirty days. You wrote for a month and a half, EVERY SINGLE DAY, without stopping." It's kind of cool when you can be your own personal hero, since, shit, you already achieved it once, what's stopping you from doing it again?

On the other hand, it sometimes makes me feel like absolute shit that I made it through half of my book in thirty days, and then it's taken me almost seven months to make it through the second half. So there's a bit of give and take going back and forth there.

I've been trying to figure out why the writing has been so difficult lately, why it just hasn't been happening as much. The glib, superficial, and fucking annoying answer would be because I'm not trying, because I haven't been sitting in front of a blank word document and a blinking cursor. But I hate glib, superficial answers. Even if they're correct, they're not terribly interesting. So let's assume that there's an interesting reason and explore it. Together.

Metaphors Are Like... Squirrels, Or Something To That Effect

It's probably a mistake, the way I approach writing. I don't mean that I think the way I write is a mistake, necessarily, although I certainly do make quite a few mistakes. Everyone does, though... I read somewhere that in order to master something, I mean, in order to really consider yourself an expert at something, it takes around 10,000 hours of practice. That's something in the order of practicing two hours, every single day, for something like fourteen years, which means I'm probably a master at sleeping, and not much else.

Anyway, my point isn't about the mistakes that I make when I write, because even though I like to think I'm pretty good at it, I realize I'm not an expert... I mean, hell, I need spell check to catch me when I do things like misspell "yourself," which I've done twice so far in this post.

The Good Is The Enemy Of The Creative

I had a thought that would ultimately lead to my return to my sadly neglected blog. Actually, there were two thoughts, although the first thought was substantially less interesting, something in the "wow, I didn't write a single post for the entire month of April." The second thought was about writing, which seems to more or less be my theme, and thus, the virtual text you now see before your eyes.

If you've glanced at my twitter (and I'm just arrogant enough to assume that maybe one or people do... the other 46 followers are probably spam bots, though) you'll notice that I have continued my habit of posting my word count on the novel. You may have noticed that lately, such posts have been coming few and far between, evidence of my inability to maintain my vow of "Write Every Day." I'm certainly humbled by the fact that my failure is so clearly illuminated, although at the same time, that was always kind of the point, you know, accountability and all. But I digress, and have yet to mention that elusive Second Thought, the one that I've indicated was worthy of writing about.

Male Writer, Female Character

Two things occurred to me as I was walking back to my car today after class: I had a really good idea for a blog post and it had also been a shamefully long couple of weeks since I'd bothered to write a blog post. Ergo, my presence here tonight. Tonight's also a little bit unique in that usually, I novel-write before I blog, which means that this is all happening out of sequence. I think I'm okay with that, though; the sequence has been a little bit messed up, as of late.

So, anyway, as I was walking, I started thinking about male writers and female protagonists in stories, and in particular, my own story which centers around a female main character and is told from the first person perspective. When I first started thinking about the story several months back, it never occurred to me to ask why I always thought of my character as a "she," it just felt like part of my sense of the character's identity. And, indeed, as a character takes shape in the mind, there comes a point in which you really can't just arbitrarily change these things, because by then, the character feels like a real person in your mind, and you don't just... you don't just change that. Not without possibly losing whatever sense of personality you might have had.

The Importance of Good Cover Art

Every so often, I find myself thinking about things like how the position of my desk influences my work ethic. Mostly because I don't want to think about other mundane things, like the fact that there are still unpacked boxes in my room from the move, even though we're well past the point of time where unpacked boxes are acceptable. It's one thing to have unpacked boxes a few days, or even a week after you move. But it's been, what, three weeks now?

Okay, so I just checked my calender and it's really only been two weeks. But still. I should finish unpacking them. Plus, I still have pictures to hang. It's one of my life's little neurotic quirks that I can't stand bare walls. There's just something about them that annoy me, which is why if there's a wall in my space that could fit a good picture of poster, well, damn it, there should be something there!

Putting It All Out There

Something came up during my novel writing session tonight and I wanted to explore it a little more fully, outside of the context of the story writing itself. Specifically, I found myself working on a scene that really, really struck close to home after some personal events that took place this past weekend. And, well, I started thinking: should I let those feelings, those thoughts influence the scene? Should I write something different, due to the fact that I can't separate myself from the situation in question?

If all this sounds horribly vague, well, that's intentional; I don't really want to talk about the specifics due to one of those curious little blog quirks that I seem to have: privacy. I mean, on the one hand, I routinely bare my soul here and talk about all the fucked up shit that's going on in my convoluted and often chaotic brain, which is a picture far more honest and intimate (I think) than what you're likely to encounter if you were to, I dunno, talk to me directly.

Blocked

I'm stuck on a story.

It's not my novel. It's a short story, for my writing class. You know, the thing that I do for my major, basically, the entirety of my academic focus. It's not that I didn't have an idea; I did have one. And I kicked it around in my head for a while, thought it had some legs, and finally sat down to try to write it...

Nothing. It's a horrible idea. Because it was just that. It was an idea. I didn't have a character for it. Didn't have a story to tell. Just had this weird thing that happened to me one day, that I thought might have been interesting. But there's nothing to say about it.

I'm kicking myself in the ass for volunteering to go first. Because this is my one shot, you know, my one chance to impress, to show that I've got the chops. I volunteered to go first because I was confident that I had this good idea, that I could nail this piece and everything would be awesome. What's driving me crazy right now, after my idea fell apart, is that I have to have something ready in two days, while my peers are going to have weeks... in some cases, even months to get their stories ready.

Why is it so hard right now? I've been sitting here for almost an hour, thinking, trying, focusing, unfocusing, all to no avail. Is it because I'm up against a deadline? Is it because I know that I have to get this thing right, and I need to have it in two days? Is it because I want it to be perfect so very, very badly, and the reality is that the perfect is the enemy of the good? That the fact that I want this so badly means I'm going to second guess myself and prevent my brain from ever taking the risks to make mistakes, even though those risks are necessary to tell any story?

Part of me wonders if some of my difficulty is because I allowed myself to slide on my writing schedule for the past... what, two weeks? I mean, sure, there was the PTQ two weeks ago, and then there was all the time that next week spent worrying about my grandmother and staying at her bedside, and then there was the move, and then there was that godawful paper I had to do, and now there's this... is that an adequate list to excuse myself from not living up to "Write Every Day?" It seemed to me, then, that it was, but now I'm not so sure. Maybe if I'd just chosen to power through the tough parts and written my goal anyway, I'd have the focus now to get through this tough spot. Maybe I made the wrong choice, after all.

And then I wonder if it's more to do with the fact that starting a new story is always the hardest part, at least for me. It's so much easier to continue writing a work that you've been doing for a few days, a few weeks, a few months... you may get stuck wondering where to go next, but you never have to deal with that first crippling uncertainty: what do I write? What story do I tell? Where do I begin?

Sometimes in the past, doing a blog entry like this when my thoughts are in chaos and my mind is swirling has helped me focus, helped me clear through some of the stuff that's driving me crazy. But I have to admit, right now, I don't feel refreshed, don't feel any more focused. All I feel is that I've got a deadline coming up in two days and I have no idea what I should be writing. All I feel is stress and frustration, both at myself and at my stupid decision to volunteer, to volunteer to go first. Why did I do that? I never do that.

Because if I hadn't have chosen to go first, you know, hadn't basically said that these past two weeks were going to be my specific crunch time, well, then I wouldn't be trying to write through a move, a family crisis, and one of the most frustrating and awful papers I've ever had to do. I could have actually sat and focused and tried to work through this story.

I wish an idea would come to me.

Cluttered Thoughts

Work progresses on the novel, albeit slowly. More and more, I find my mind wandering, find myself thinking of other stories I'd like to tell. I'm not quite sure how to feel about this, to be honest. In one sense, I feel anxious because I would hate to burn out on this project, not now, not after 94,000 words. On the other hand, maybe that signals that I'm getting close to the end this time, that the initial writing phase is nearing completion and my mind is already moving head, wondering what the next project will be. I think I'd like that, actually, because it would mean I could start on the editing process for the current story, which would place me that much closer to sharing it with other people... and maybe even publishing it.

For a long time now, I've wanted to tell a story about dragons. At various times, I've made a few attempts. In particular, I can recall one ambitious epic I'd outlined and written the first chapter for, about this crazy world of magic and technology, and a zombie plague, and dragon hunters, and how a dragon would save the world. I can't remember what I was going to call it. All I know is that I thought and thought and thought about the story, but never got it going, never got it off the ground. In hindsight, I think that it was probably a good thing that I never tried to write that story, because dragons don't lend themselves well to being main characters in your typical fantasy epic (or even your atypical fantasy/sci-fi amalgam) since, you know, they can fly 'n stuff. Flight is one of those things that pretty much destroys any sort of "journey story" since you can just skip right over to the finale. Consider how much shorter the Lord of the Rings would have been if they'd just ridden an eagle to Mount Doom. (Yes, I know that there are story reasons for why they didn't do that but that's not my point here).

There are a lot of reasons why I want to tell a dragon story, and yet, there are reasons why I'm afraid to try. I think it means confronting and trying to explain why they matter to me, why I've taken something so prevalent and iconic in fantasy and mythology and made some sort of personal claim to it, adopted it as a symbol of sorts for myself. I worry that maybe I'm too close, maybe I'm too attached, that maybe the fact that I love dragons, the idea of them, all of that... maybe it means I won't be able to write the kind of story I want to write. Maybe I'm embarrassed to try, because it means opening up that part of myself to an audience that may embrace, dismiss, or worse, openly denigrate in response.

And yet, maybe that same attachment is why I know that I should try. Because this is something that's part of me, part of my mind, for better or for worse, and part of me needs to know if I can do it, if I can capture the experience as I know it and translate those feelings into language.

It's far too early to think about what the next story should be. For one thing, I need to devote a significant portion of my creative energy to coming up with my short story for my writing class, since, you know, it's due by March 8th and will be reviewed by all of my peers and my professor. Not that I'm nervous about that or anything. Okay, I lied. I'm totally nervous.

I do have the idea for that story in mind, and it's very likely that, even before I finish "Fallen" I'll pause my work on that to dedicate my nightly writing sessions to writing that story. So, honestly, all this talk about what comes next after "Fallen" is quite premature, and really, the only reason I'm blogging about it is because it's what's on my mind right now and the entire purpose of this space is for me to voice my thoughts, mostly so they don't remain all cluttered in my brain.

Anyway, there's a lot to do, and quite a few things that are dominating my very immediate future, including that short story and some essays and the fact that I'm moving this weekend and... yeah, so you might say I've still got a lot on my mind.

And Time Is Still Marching On

It occurs to me, from time to time, that I do a lot of work that has no bearing on my academic career. This is typically a point that's driven home for me when I realize that having encroaching paper due dates will most likely cut into my blogging and possibly even my novel writing time. Which is a weird thing to think about, to be honest.

So, like an idiot, I volunteered to be the first person to present my short story for workshop in my fiction class in a few weeks. March 22nd is the date. No biggie, I thought smugly as I watched the professor write my name in the slot. That's plenty of time to write a fifteen page short story. Side note: it always amuses me how relaxed I am about longer assignments... it's just hard to get dismayed by fifteen pages when I'm working on something that's currently 163 pages, single spaced.

Wait. Something was off, something in the back of my mind told me I was missing an important calculation, something that would change the entire meaning of this equation. What was it, what was it, what...

I consulted my planner. Checked dates. Nope, nothing the week of the 22nd. I'm good there.

And just a reminder, the professor said, be sure to have copies of your story a week before your workshop date, so we have time to look over them. Still not a problem, March 15th is a long ways off, too. Not quite as long as the 22nd, but.... oh wait. Wait.

Oh.

March 15th is part of that magical time of the year known to college students as "Spring Break." Which meant no class before my presentation. Which meant... that I'd have to turn my story in the week before that. Which meant turning it in on the 8th.

Which meant I have to be ready in three weeks.

Well, shit.

The good news is that I have a pretty good idea for a story, I think. I mean, I hope I do; I guess I won't really know until I actually start working on it, which I really, really should do soon. Fortunately for me, the way I see it, I'm already in the habit of writing every day. So, really, it shouldn't be difficult to replace my novel writing time for short story writing time. I can start that tomorrow, and since I'm still writing, it completely fits in with my goal of Write Every Day. Hey, this won't be so bad!

So why do I feel like my writing class is interfering with my stated goal of being a writer?


How very, very odd.

Who Am I

Who are we?

Who am I? Who are you?

It's one of the most important questions we can ever ask, right up there with "why" (which is the single most important question, I think) and "how do we know that we really know anything?" The question of who one is... it's a question that seeks to compress the entirety of an individual human experience into... what, exactly? Something that can be answered in a sentence? A page? A book? Something that can be translated into mere language, mere words?

How do you even try to answer that question? Where do you begin? Do you talk about what you do, what you've done, what you hope to do in the future? But then you've not really answered the question, have you? Not the question I'm asking, anyway. You've told me what you've done, what you do, what you will do. You haven't told me who you are.

I can ask the question of you, of myself, of anybody in the world. I can get a thousand answers, a million, a billion, and all of them will answer a variation of "what" instead of "who?"

For the record, I understand the difference between who and whom. I just don't care about it as much as I do other bad habits of speech; "who" just happens to sound better in most cases. So there. Moving on.

I'm a writer. I'm a gamer. I'm a cat owner, an apartment renter. A student, and not a great one at that. I'm a son. A friend. Maybe even a best friend. A brother. Maybe some day I'll be a father. All things that answer the question of what I am. Not who.

I like music and movies. I like books. I like the color purple. I don't like spiders. I like vanilla. I like to think that I'm a romantic. I like feeling witty and clever. I don't like stupid people.

All variations of what. What I am, what I like, what I do, what I want. What, what, what. I can never describe who. Even my name doesn't really answer the question; it might tell you who I am, in the sense of identity, in the sense that you can now distinguish me from the other 6.6 billion people in the world in some small way. But who is Matthew, exactly? My name is something that my parents gave me; it has a meaning, a meaning that might even describe me, if I'm lucky, but it wasn't created for me. There are other people who share the same name, other people who the name describes.

Don't we need to know this question? Don't we need to be able to know who we are? We walk around every day and see our fellow humans, our fellow men and woman, and we see the faces and the masks, and we're all aware, in some small sense, that no one is ever who they truly appear to be. We all have secrets. Thoughts we don't ever, ever share, however small and insignificant. We all have moments we're not proud of, we all have and do things that we think are "out of character" at times. We're not really like that, we say and think later. That's not who we are. Not who I am. That person, that other person, he's not me.

But how can I say that, how can I think that and believe that when I don't even know who I am?

Winterborn 77

When was the last time I did this? Tuesday night? Is it possible that entire days have slipped by without my noticing? It would seem so.

And to think, you might have wondered why the tagline or the sub-title or whatever the fuck you call that line underneath the title was a poignant query: "What did I do yesterday?"

I can recall writing. And... other things.

It was entirely my intention to miss only a single day of the blog schedule. But I can't quite recall, now, which day that was supposed to be. Was it Wednesday? I think it was Wednesday, as, if memory serves, that was a night dominated first by a rousing game of Dungeons & Dragons, a game that ran well into the wee hours of the morning. I recall a certain feeling of trepidation as I said my immortal words, in the manner of who rightly calls himself The Master of Dungeons And All They Contain Therein: "And I think we'll call it there for the night. Good game, guys."

Long pause. Glance at clock. I think it was approaching 2 AM. Or maybe 3 AM. It was well past the midnight hour, I can assure you!

Then: "Oh, fuck me. I still have to do my writing for the night."

I did, indeed, do my writing for that night, as I have now done reliably for what is, by my count, a solid two weeks without missing a day. It's gotten to the point, as it did during NaNoWriMo that "doing my writing" is just this thing, this aspect of my life that I have to do, whether I want to or not. I'm proud of myself for that, even though I haven't wanted to write at all during this week. But I wrote anyway, and you know, it may not be all that good, it may be that when I go back and edit the work, I look back on this time with derision. "I really just should have stayed away from my keyboard that week," Future Me might say with a smirk.

But, Goddamnit, I wrote anyway. And I'm glad that I did. Because this is my life, bitches, this is a thing that I use to define myself as a person. It's not what I do, not the way I want to pay the bills. It's something that's a part of me, that's inseprable from the greater whole of my person. I cannot willingly diverge from the act, not now, not when I know that to do as such is to backslide into depression and a grim, joyless existence.

You may think I'm exaggerating. I challenge you to go browse the archives of my previous blog. Read a few entries. Note the tone and the subject. And then note the dates between entries.

I wrote two short stories in the past two years, prior to 2009.

I worked on my novel manuscript, the sequel to my very first novel, maybe twice in all of 2009. And prior to that, I don't think I'd even taken a crack at it since 2007. I wasn't a writer, then. I might have told myself, and others, that I was one, and very much wanted to be one. But I wasn't writing, and as such, you cannot be any certain title or thing unless you first engage in the behavior embodied by said title.

But now, here I am, writing every day even though I don't feel like it most days, blogging even though maybe ten people (at best) read this, and you know what? I feel fucking awesome as a result.

It's gotten to the point now where this novel of mine, this Write Every Day thing that I put to myself as a challenge has begun to matter more to me than being a university student? I'm not sure if that's a statement as to the level of immersion I have towards my studies, or an indication that my priorities are just that twisted.

I saw snow today at the mall on campus. It was fucking incredible.

I Really Don't Feel Like It

Really didn't want to write tonight.

I just didn't, still don't really, feel like I have much to say. Some days are like that. Some days, it's not that you feel too tired, too overworked, too whatever. Some days, you just don't feel like anything. Some days, there's just nothing on your mind worth sharing.

And yet, those are the days that I feel it's absolutely the most important to make the effort to stick with the schedule, to focus on the goal of Write Every Day. Because it's not the bad days that break routines. It's days like this one. Days where you don't have any real good excuse other than "I don't feel like it." Because it's easy to say "I don't feel like it" every day, and that's how you fall into the Nirvana Fallacy that I wrote about a while back; where you get into the habit of waiting for that "perfect day" to dedicate to writing. You know the day I'm talking about, even if you're not a writer. That magical day "some day in the future," where you'll feel like doing all the things you keep putting off. You'll balance the check book, clean out the closet, get started on that novel you've been telling people about since you were sixteen. Just need to have that perfect day. Then everything will be great.

That day never comes. Ever.

Oh, sure, there might be a day here and there where you feel really inspired. Days where the motivation is kicking and you get a lot of things done. I know there were days where the feeling that "I really should write" led me to sit down at the computer, bang out a thousand words, declare myself satisfied with my effort... and then allow myself to lapse for another four weeks.

You can't live your life waiting for that perfect day, where you'll have the time, energy and initiative to do everything you know you need to do.

That's a powerful life lesson, I think, one that extends far beyond writing. So many excuses start with "as soon as." As a world class procrastinator, I know all too well the allure of "as soon as." I'll get started on my book again as soon as class is over, so I'll have more time. I'll start writing as soon as class begins, because class always makes me think about writing and that gets me to do it. I'll start as soon as I feel better. As soon as I have a day off. As soon as I'm done playing video games.

And on, and on, into infinity.

That's why I can't allow myself to slack off on these days where I don't feel like it, when there's a million other things I'd rather be doing. Because there won't be many of those days where I "do" like it, unless I make them. Most of the time, when I sit down to write, I'm wanting to do other stuff, and it's not until the page gets going and the voices come alive in my mind that the work becomes a joy (and sometimes, not even then.)

What can I say? Writing is hard.

That doesn't change the fact that I love it, or the fact that every day I can mark off as a success in the goal of "Write Every Day" means that I feel that much better about myself and my life. And to top it all off, eventually, I'll have a book to show for it! Score! As well as a consistently updated blog, which is something I've always dreamed of having, and so rarely managed to actually achieve.

Now, if I could only find the same motivation to attend class every day as I seem to have found for both blogging and my novel. Then I'd be all set.

Maybe I need to tell myself that tomorrow is Day One of "Go To Class Every Day." See how many days I can go without skipping, oversleeping or missing a class.

Actually, that's a pretty good idea. I think I'll do that. Starting now.

Guilty Pleasure

I spent the day reading.

It really wasn't my intention, since I had things to do today; really needed to get my car down to the mechanic so he can hopefully fix the whole "my car doesn't start when it's cold, or when it rains, or when it doesn't feel like it" problem. And I've been having this really annoying pain in my jaw, which my ever-so-helpful brother insists means I need a root canal, so there was that whole "make an appointment with the dentist" thing. There was the class thing, which I didn't do because of the car thing, and the fact that I just... couldn't find the motivation to make myself go. That's a horrible reason for missing a class, but it's the truth, and frankly, if you feel the need to lie to your blog, well, I'm not judging you, I'm just saying... maybe you have issues, dude.

So I pretty much frittered away my time reading books.

I say frittered, because they weren't particularly important books.Omen and Abyss, by Christie Golden and Troy Denning, respectively. I say they're not important books, and that's because they're both Star Wars novels, which has for a long time now been a guilty pleasure of mine. Some of it (a lot of it, actually) has to do with the fact that, especially in my teenage years, Star Wars novels were basically all that I read for a while. You might say it had an impact on me, especially when The Last One Standing remains my favorite short story to this very day, or at least, it's the one I can quote almost line by line. And yeah, it's a Star Wars story, about perennial bad ass Boba Fett (at least as far as the EU material is concerned.)

As a little side note, I've read some of Christie Golden's work before, from the WarCraft universe, and I think that she really should write a book in an original setting. The first half of Arthas, where she's allowed to tell her own story instead of just following the preordained canon, was quite good, and I really liked her new character Vestara in the Omen novel.

Although I'm a Star Wars geek (and really, many other flavors of Geek, but I do have that purple lightsaber on display in my living room, so, you know) there's something about the Star Wars books that have always just been a source of consternation for me. I suppose it's because I can see them for what they are, and cringe appropriately at all the flaws that I would have cheerfully ignored at 13. For one thing, the galaxy, despite having a name and backstory for every single alien that appears in every single movie, is really quite small, focusing on a handful of individuals over pretty much every moment of their entire lives. The setting is larger than Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, and so on, or at least, it could and should be.

Second, when you're working with such iconic characters, you get the feeling that the author isn't really free to use his or her own voice to tell the story, because we all know who Luke Skywalker is from the movies, and the comics, and the mountain of books that came before the one you're reading now. This is one of the main problems I have with "shared universe" fiction, or at least, a problem I have with characters written by more than one author. There's no chance to really feel that personal, intimate connection between author and character. You might "get" Luke Skywalker, you might understand who he is, what he sounds like, what he'd do in the scenario that you've presented to him. But you don't own him. You don't get to be him when you're writing him. You're just borrowing him.

All of those things, as well as several others, such as the fact that no serious, literate individual would admit to reading Star Wars books, and you have to wonder, why do I keep reading? And not just reading... but devouring. I remember reading through all nine books of the Legacy of the Force series in about two days. I started Omen last night, finished it this morning, promptly went into Abyss and finished that, too. There's just something about these books that draws me in and makes me want to stay there for a while. I get lost in the universe, the galaxy far, far away, for a while, and maybe it reminds me of simpler times, when I was a kid sitting on my bed, rereading my Han Solo novel for the zillionth time? Maybe it reminds me of how much the movies captivated me when I was younger?

Maybe it's because the novels don't have to be all that good, because they're trying to be something else: pure escapism, which isn't a bad thing. When I get into these books, I lose myself in them, to such an extent that when I get interrupted, I feel like I've been dragged back out into the real world. I remember driving down to the mechanic feeling disoriented and out of sorts, wishing I could just get back into my book as soon as possible. Not because I had to know how it ends, not because it was the most amazing thing I'd ever read, but simply because I liked being in that place.

I'm not sure, but I think that's a pretty cool thing for a book to do.

And so I'll continue with my guilty pleasure, even as my literary training tells me all the reasons I should be ashamed of myself and forces me to focus on all the flaws that have no place in my brain alongside the "great literary works." I'll continue, because more and more, I find myself not caring about certain things. I don't care any more about all those great literary works that I absolutely must read, or else be branded an ignorant troglodyte. I can't tell you how many classics I find boring, how many fail to captivate me, and yet I'm expected to regard them as holy relics, why? Because they're literature?

I say no. I can understand, in an academic sense, why the Mona Lisa is an amazing artistic accomplishment. I understand why Mozart is considered a master composer, why his symphonies are so highly respected. But that doesn't change the fact that my favorite piece of "art" is the poster I have of a dragon on my wall, and my favorite song wasn't written by Mozart, but by a guy singing about zombies, and why, although I get why I should love literature, the truth is, I really, really just like reading stories.

I like stories that make me happy, or make me sad, or make me anxious. I like stories that I can escape in, for a while, stories that make me turn the pages as quickly as I can get through them. I like stories and characters and adventures and yes, even silly, awesome things like lightsabers. I don't care that it's not academically impressive. I don't care that it's not cool.

It's what I like to read and I'm fucking sick of the fact that so many individuals in my academic world look down so disdainfully on the stories that enjoy. I'm sick of the fact that all we talk about in my class about novels is fucking bullshit about how "the novel represents the destruction of society and the freedom of the mind from an oppressive world." That doesn't mean jack shit to me. You know why I like novels? Why I like reading at all?

Because I love stories.

Because telling stories is what I do.

I don't care about anything else. I don't care about the beauty on the page, I don't care about the important contribution that this book or that book made to the world, I don't care. It's all just so much bullshit, so much posturing, so much an attempt to prove that storytelling doesn't matter unless it's literature. 

But you know what? At the end of the day, in the final analysis, no matter how much you want to draw a distinction between literature and "genre trash," no matter how much you want to disparage popular fiction and bemoan for the glory days of "real writing," the truth is that all these ideas about what novels are, what literature is and what the rest of writing isn't don't fucking matter. Because, in the end, you know what?

We're all just doing a more sophisticated version of what our ancestors did thousands of years ago: making paintings on cave walls and telling each other tales by firelight.

Meaning And Intention

So there's something that's been on my mind for the past couple of days, as the result of two different conversations with two different people. In the first instance, I was talking about the characters in my book and realized that, taken in a certain context, my characters really represent a pretty powerful metaphor for the issues of one's sexual identity and whether gender is something defined by a person's body, or by the mental image one has for one's self.

In the other conversation, we were talking about Avatar, and whether it was "too preachy."

Now, my thoughts on the matter (I'm building to a larger point, don't worry) is that for a movie to be "preachy," the message has to be the point. There are undeniably movies that have a message, that tell a certain story because the creator wants the audience to understand and hopefully come to accept his or her personal view. The message is the focus, it's the entire purpose for the movie. The story is entirely a device for conveying that message.

On the other hand, you have movies in which the message is entirely incidental to the message that one takes away from the film. Avatar, in my opinion, is a good example of this. While it certainly has all the tropes in place about overthrowing the evil capitalistic machine that seeks to despoil the pristine natural world, I don't think James Cameron really wants us to walk out of his movie and run off to the rainforest to fight logging or whatever. All of the tropes invoked, despite perhaps conveying that particular message, were largely inconsequential; they happened only because that's the particular story Cameron wanted to tell.

One might say that a writer or director or creative person should be cognizant of the message that invariably appears in their works. If it wasn't Cameron's intention to portray modernity as an evil force in Avatar, he shouldn't have made them all seem like such bastards. He should have told a different story, or been more careful about the story he was telling.

I don't think that's fair, though. Speaking entirely from the perspective of a creative type, you tell the story that you want to tell. You tell the story that's on your mind, in your heart, the one you feel passionately about. You make the story that you want to make. So, my little novel about a fallen angel turns out to have some powerful metaphors about transgendered individuals and perceptions of sexual identity. Okay. Awesome. That doesn't mean that's why I wrote it, and that doesn't mean that's what I'm trying to tell people who will read my story. It's just something that happened as a result of the particular story I chose to tell.

The reality is that when you make something, be it a movie or a novel, as soon as you release it into the world, it's no longer yours. As soon as it enters the mind of your reader, or your audience, it becomes theirs to do with as they will (violations of copyright notwithstanding, of course). They can read into it how they wish, take away from it whatever they wish to take away from it. You can tell them they are wrong, that such a message was not your intent, and you might well be right... but that won't stop them. It shouldn't stop them, because all too often, the work in question is larger than the creator. The work will have layers that the creator never even dreamed existed, because in so many ways, the creator is little more than a conduit for the story itself, the means by which the story is brought into the world.

If a movie specifically tells me to run out and save all the trees, and the director made said movie with that specific goal in mind, okay, fine. That's the message. But if a director makes a movie about a beautiful natural world and an invading force, and the point of the story is to become engaged with the characters and the world he or she has created, then the message is largely inconsequential. My inadvertent metaphor about sexual identity does not mean I have personal opinions on the matter, or that I want my readers to embrace my opinions. It's just something that happened, it's a sort of baggage that carries along as a result of invoking storytelling tropes and using a shared language in which volumes of meaning are often embodied in something as small as a single word choice.

Thoughts On Day One

I'm going to go on record as saying that a good beer really can make or break the writing experience for me. I don't know how it works for you, but for me? Nothing beats having that bottle on the desk next to my monitor. I'm not sure if it's the ritual of it, or the fact that it's an image so deeply ingrained in the popular culture, or if I just really like beer, but it really helps.

No, really. When you get stuck on a scene, and you know you can nail it, if you can just get the words right, having that distraction really helps take my mind off the fact that, damn it, I'm stuck. Because realizing that you're stuck is the quickest way to get even more stuck... to get stucker... or whatever the fuck you call it.

If you're curious, tonight, I was drinking Drop Top Amber Ale. I'm told by people who know things about this sort of thing that this beer is brewed right here in Tucson. If it is, and you're in Tucson, you should look for some. If not, you have my condolences, as it's a very good beer.

I was at the supermarket today with my mom, doing some shopping as is the custom in such establishments. It's sort of become a ritual for us, to do our shopping together, because both of us absolutely hate shopping, me especially. So it's become equal parts act of necessity (everybody's gotta eat, after all) equal parts opportunity to spend some time together, since I find that it becomes all too easy to slip into my own little world if I don't work to remain connected to my family.

Anyway, the first time we did this little shopping trip together, I remember walking around in this, I don't know what you'd call it. This daze. This ennui. I didn't care about being there. I didn't have anything to say. I wasn't angry, wasn't sad, wasn't anything. My mom said she was worried about me, said I seemed like I was depressed. Said I should really go talk to a doctor, you know, just to get everything checked out. I can't say I disagree with her opinion, since I don't have anything against doctors even though I stubbornly refuse to visit them. Don't ask me why, I don't have a reason.

And yes, if you're wondering, this particular shopping trip took place before I'd rededicated myself to the personal goal of "Write Every Day."

So, tonight was our biweekly (wait, is biweekly every week, or twice a week? I can never remember) and while we're cruising the shelves, filling our respective carts, I asked my mom if I seemed better than the last time we were out. We'd talked a few times about how I'd been feeling, so she knows that I'd begun writing again. She said the change that writing has on my personality is amazing. I joked that I didn't know whether I should be grateful that I know how to manage my depression so effectively, or if I should be distressed that I depend on writing to maintain my mental health.

I still don't actually know which I should be.

If there's a point in this rambling little anecdote, it's that I like feeling this way. Even more than I like the feeling of writing, even more than I like seeing the story develop and the characters come to life, even more than I like the happy little fantasies about publishing and having people read my story, I like feeling good. I like feeling proud of myself, I like feeling positive. I like not being miserable.

I like being me. I like being the me that feels complete and fulfilled, the me that feels like he's doing what he should be doing with his life. That's a rare thing, I think, a comfortable assurance that some people may spend their entire lives looking for. I'm not saying that I've got it all figured out yet, or that this is the only thing I'm ever going to do, or the only thing that I was meant to do. I mean, for one thing, that makes it sound like I have a destiny, and I certainly don't believe in that.

And, Mom, I know that you read this from time to time, although it might be several days or weeks before you make it to this entry. When you do read it, I want you to remember what I told you tonight, about being my inspiration, not for my characters or for my story, but for inspiring me to make the commitment to Write Every Day. Like I told you before, you're the example I have for not stopping even though sometimes I really, really want to stop.

You're the one who keeps me from going back to Day One, and the posts in this blog are evidence of how much that means to me. And you know what? Even if I do falter, even if I do fail, even I do quit... you're also my inspiration for climbing back up and starting at Day One all over again.

The Mind Maelstrom

Some days, I forget that I have a blog.

Actually, that's not true. Certainly, there are days where I wish I didn't have a blog. Just like there are days where I wish I didn't want so badly to write and publish a novel. But those are just some days, and usually, they're rare days. Ironically enough, the secret to making myself feel better about those days is to write in my blog and work on my novel, because then these two things are no longer a source of anxiety and personal consternation, but become achievements that I can take pride in.

Speaking of pride (which is a Mortal Sin, or so I'm told), I'm proud of myself for not yet breaking my goal of "Write Every Day." It was particular difficult last night, when the D&D game didn't break until about 12:30 and I didn't even sit down to write until about 1 AM. The fact that I did it even though I was tired, even though I really, really, really didn't want to do it has done a lot for my personal morale. The fact that I didn't reach the thousand work mark, which is sort of my informal daily milestone, doesn't even bother me that much.

I didn't reach the 1k goal tonight, either, although I rationalized it by saying that 800 or so words is pretty close to a thousand, and I had to write a scene for my fiction class, and at least I put in a pretty solid effort, so my stupid fucking neurotic voice can just shut its stupid mouth and go back to the dark corner of my mind. Yeah, I should that part of... myself. Awesome.

I have a pretty back toothache that seems to be getting steadily worse. Going to be paying a visit to the dentist tomorrow, even though I really don't like dentists. I especially didn't like my last one, with his whole "fuck painkillers, you'll barely even feel the drill" mentality when it came to drilling cavities. Uh, no fucking thank you, doc, in my book, there's a pretty big difference between "hardly" and "not." For example, I'd much rather be "not dead" or "not in pain" than "barely dead" or "barely in pain."

Got a good recommendation for a new place, though, so tomorrow, we'll go see what's what. I'm certain that there will be bad news. Like, not just the usual "you have cavities" bad news, but something along the lines of "the entire inside of your upper jaw is rotting from the inside out and will have to be surgically removed. Don't worry, you'll barely even notice it's gone."

Damn it, there's that word again.

Is it a bad sign that I really wished I had a beer to enjoy while I was working on my novel tonight? At the time, I tried to rationalize that a drink would have giving me something to occupy my mind during the pauses while I'd think about what the next line should be. Now, though, I'm not so sure the desire is quite that innocent.

I suppose it's a good sign that I didn't just go straight for the bottle of Crown Royal, yeah? That'd be the sign of a truly hardened, horribly cliched alcoholic writer.

Damn it, now I'm thinking about that bottle of Crown.

There's A Door And There's A Key

It's amazing how good it feels, to be doing this again. To feel confident about myself and to have this sense of certainty, when I wonder if I'm living my life the way I'm supposed to be, if it's the "right" way. Rarely are we able to have any such assurances, I think, so I'm happy to take whatever I can get.

Lately, I've been thinking about whether or not I should try to release my current novel as two separate works, rather than the single massive volume it's shaping into. I originally decided to continue the manuscript because I felt that I wasn't yet ready to stop telling the story, and also because I felt the first work was just a little bit too short. But now as I get further and further into the new narrator and the new work, it's really begun to take on a life of its own. That's a good thing, I think, it shows a certain level of organic growth in the characters and my understanding of them. But does that mean that this is a new novel?

I wonder, when I do go back and do the editing process, will I find myself adding here and there so much that it increases my manuscript to an acceptable "novel length?" Or will I cut more than I add? Or should I even bother worrying about such things? The point, after all, is not to try to write towards some arbitrary number of pages or words, but to compose until the story is done. Done could be at 50,000 words or 100,000.

I'm not going to stop writing on what I've been referring to more and more as "Book II." But maybe it's time to embrace that it's really going to be its own book. Maybe it's time to do some editing even as I keep going with the writing. It's a thought that makes me both anxious and excited. Excited, because really, how cool would it be to have one manuscript done and be able to say I'm working on another one; that's like seriously heavy writer dedication there.

Anxious, because, let's face it, the creative part, the writing part... that's the best part. Editing is more work than anything, and the idea of trying to get published? Well, as much as I want to get this story out of my hands and into the world, the idea of publishing is pretty terrifying. Rejection will be there. You can bet your ass on that. Rejection is part of life, whether you are a writer or not. Writers just seem to get the dubious advantage of having their rejections occur in a codified and tangible letter that makes the whole thing seem more real.

So that's where my head is at tonight. I'm glad to be writing and I'm thinking about all of these different things about what to do with this story of mine, this baby that I've been... working on doesn't really sound like the right word. One doesn't "do work" on a baby. But the reality is that this is my baby, this thing has been in my mind and in my dreams and on my fingertips for a good few months now. When is it time to start the process of letting go, of preparing it to be sent off into the world?

I wonder if this is what parents go through. I wouldn't know, myself, not being one. But if it is, wow.

Stressful doesn't even begin to cover it.

On Gaming

So it looks like seven posts per month is going to be the new standard? I'll be honest, I'm not sure if I should aim for seven for February so the archive will have a nice sort of symmetry, or focus on getting back on track, writin as much as I can as often as I can. The former would certainly feed my latent OCD tendencies, while the latter would produce better writing and a better me, since I'm happier when I'm writing (as we've discussed) and I've noticed that when I'm being prolific, it shows no matter what I'm working on. I get more polished, more crisp, more focused, when I'm writing every day. That's not just my own opinion either, but something that I've had people tell me. When I work every day, when I make the commitment to do this every day, it shows in the final product. And that's worthwhile.

I don't know if this happens to other people, but I find myself engaging in all kinds of mental gymnastics when it comes to my work. I spend far too much time thinking about what kind of music produces the best writing, whether what I ate that day has any effect on my creativity, whether I played any video games, and on and on and on. To some extent, I've noticed a few correlations, especially in the video game connection, although oddly, not quite in the way you'd expect.

It'd be entirely reasonable to assume that playing video games leads to a reduced work output as I struggle to balance the need to write with the desire to game. And yet, I've come to realize that it's not so much the time I spend gaming, but what I'm playing that really effects how I feel about writing and how much writing I'll manage to get done. In particular, single player games, especially those with strong stories, really serve to inspire me and motivate me to tell my own stories; Dragon Age, in particular served as a great resource when I'd get stuck on trying to make a character's voice sound distinctive.

On the other hand, multiplayer games (both of the MMO and competitive variety) absolutely murder my work ethic. I know that I definitely went on a bit of a spree with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and that for a few weeks there, I was playing it as often as I could and far more than I should have been. As I showed with the Dragon Age example, I don't think that games are necessarily damaging to my work... they can sometimes be a helpful resource for getting my mind thinking and coming up with my own characters and ideas. But multiplayer games... that's another story, if you'll pardon the lame ass pun.

In multiplayer games, I'm not thinking about characters, or voices, or story. I'm thinking about the game, about winning, about doing whatever it takes to play as hard as I can and do the best that I can. And that competitive drive, that desire to win shuts down the other parts of my brain. There's no voice when I'm playing to win, there's no pondering about what sort of epic narrative might be spawned from my struggle; there's only me, and my opponents, and my objective. Nothing else.

The other problem with the multiplayer games is that they're terrible time sinks in a way that Dragon Age and other single player games could never be. That seems a little bit odd, since it's the single player RPGs that get the reputation for being massive, 60 hours or more a playthrough. The problem, though, is that with Dragon Age, yeah, I'd play it for a long stretch at a time, but it was easier to pace myself, easier to say, "okay, I've played enough for tonight." This happened for a few reasons; within the context of the story being told, there were moments of rising action, climax, and falling action, as you moved from chapter to chapter in that particular narrative, and so there were natural stopping points where it was okay to sign off for the night. Also, although I was very, very excited to complete the game and find out "what happens," there's also the sobering knowledge that part of the thrill in a single player game is the feeling you get when everything's new, when you don't know how it's going to end or what's around the corner. When you find a game that you really, really love, and maybe if you're like me, you try to make that experience last for as long as you can.

Multiplayer, on the other hand... there's no balance, no ebb and flow. There's just the conflict, the victory, the defeat, and then the next game. And the urge to play "just one more game" is overwhelming. It's all-consuming. It's addicting. So many times over the past month would I find myself logging in to Modern Warfare to play for "a few games," only to realize that I'd been playing for hours on end. And even after realizing that it was getting late, that I should do some writing, the urge to play "just one more game" was hard to resist.

Don't get me wrong, I love the multiplayer aspect. I love playing games with my friends. I love the competition. But more and more, as I feel my World of WarCraft days fade further and further into my past, as I realize it's been more than half a year since I "seriously" played that game, which is the longest I've gone without it since I first began playing in 2005, I realize that there is a very dangerous "too much of a good thing" going on with our games today. I can recall, quite clearly, a younger version of me who squeezed every last drop of playability out of my games. I remember always trying to find more things to do in games, anything to make the game last longer. Maybe that was because games were shorter back in those days or maybe it was because I had way more free time as a kid. Maybe a little of both, I don't know.

What I do know is that somewhere along the way, the whole "all good things must come to an end" rule got broken. The multiplayer game where you could play for as long as you had someone to play with became the massively multiplayer game, which were also called persistent worlds in the either days, and were very much defined by the fact that they did not end. Ever. You played until you burnt out, or something new came along, or your life shattered and you were dragged kicking and screaming back into the real world.

I love Dragon Age; it's currently my favorite game to play and I'm sure will be for a while yet. But I know that no matter how much I love Dragon Age, there will come a time when I'm done with it, when it will be time to move on, because there's nothing left to do. It happened before, with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. It happened with Mass Effect. It happened with Oblivion. It happened with Morrowind. No matter how much I loved those games, eventually, it was time to go. That is not to say that I love them any less now; I have fond memories of all of those games, memories that I'll keep with me and cherish. But there came a natural end to my playing of those games. There was a point when I was done.

Multiplayer and massively multiplayer games don't have that natural, gentle break. They go on and on and on, into infinity, essentially, since the only thing that'll stop you from playing is you. There's no natural break. There's no sense, ever, that it's time to let go and move on. At one point, I thought that was kind of cool; after all, if you're having fun, you don't want the fun to end. The last page of a good book always makes you a little sad that it's over. It sucks when you realize the credits are about to roll on a great movie. You aren't ready to leave when those things happen.

And yet, I can't help but feel that's the difference between playing games as a child and playing them now as an adult. I shudder to think about what would have happened to be if there were MMOs when I was a kid, when I was utterly incapable of grasping the idea that too much of a good thing was even possible. If I could conceive of such a thing, it would be only in the very vaguest sense. Here, now, at this point in my life, I can understand and appreciate a finite limit to my enjoyment of any particular game. It means I don't have to worry about falling into addiction, about losing control entirely.

I like playing games. Love it, in fact. My collection is pretty extensive, and I very much doubt I'm going to grow out of it any time soon, or really, ever. And I like playing games with my friends. And I like the idea about being able to immerse myself in the fantasy worlds, the escapism, the release from normal life.

For brief periods of time.

There have to be limits. There has to be a time when you say, "okay, that's enough," and move on. That's healthy, that's responsible, that's mature.

But more and more, I realize that the MMO tries to break those limits. Not just tries, but succeeds. And that's dangerous. That's unsettling.

There have to be limits.

Stasis

My toes are rather cold. I have slippers somewhere, but they never seem to be in a convenient location during these moments when I become aware of my discomfort. I imagine I'll attempt to rectify this, once my work here is done.

Hello. It's been a while, hasn't it; the longest break I've taken since I started this blog back in August, though not the longest break I've ever taken from blogging; you can go look at my original blog and see how I'd sometimes go inactive for months at a time. I'd always return eventually and write a post about how this time, I'm going to promise to keep a regular schedule again, not let the whole thing lapse. I've even done that here a few times, along with all the promising I did to not allow myself to lapse in the first place.

And yet, lapse I did. I suppose there are a few ways I could go about this. I could do the whole song and dance that I've done time and time again, and promise up and down that I won't allow it to happen again, that I'm back for reals this time. Or I could lament about how I knew it, all along, in all of that reflecting, that I couldn't keep up the pace of writing every day, that I couldn't really do it. I let myself skip one day, and then one day became a week, and then a week became two months punctuated with little more than token efforts to get back on track.

I could allow that to be a source of despair, that I failed, that all my fears were confirmed. Or..

Or, I could look at this as a chance to begin again. Another start. Day one.

I managed to blog regularly for a solid four months. I manage to work on my novel for over a month and a half without interruption or distraction. I did that during the busiest month of the year, through holidays and other distractions (Dragon Age: Origins, my most favoritest video game in the history of ever!). I could feel angry at myself for slipping, or I could realize that I did this once, and I can do it again, could realize that not living up to your goals is only truly harmful if you allow that failure to be the reason that you quit trying.

Because it will never, ever get easier. It'll never get to a point in life where there's this magical time where I have no distractions, where I'll wake up every single day and feel like today, today is the perfect day for writing. There will be days when it's good, when it flows and I'll stop not because I feel like it, but because I must, because there are other essays to write, other projects to complete, etc. And there will be days when it feels too hard, when I'd rather do nothing at all then write, because doing nothing is the very easiest thing in the world to do. It's worse by far than simply procrastinating with a video game or a movie, because even those things require some small measure of effort to get into.

There will be many such days in my future, I'd imagine.

People in my life that know me, that care about me, that are close to me often have told me, at certain times, that I've been depressed. And certainly if I look back on various periods, I can certainly see all the signs that would indicate that they were very accurate in that assessment. I may even be depressed now, I don't know.

I try to look at myself and look at those moments, and wonder what became different. Why do I seem so depressed sometimes to such an extent that everybody around me notices, and seem so very normal the rest of the time? Is it because I truly feel differently? At one time, I'd have said that was the case.

Now, though, now I think it's something else. Today, when I look back at the me of the past two months, and compare that to the me in November, I don't see myself as somehow being different. I had just as many things bothering me in December as I did in November. I have just as many problems then as I do now, as I did before and as I will tomorrow. The only difference, the only thing that's different is that when I seem depressed, it's because I've allowed myself to get into that state of "doing nothing."

It becomes a state of apathy and detachment and stasis, when I allow myself to do nothing. Compare it to when I keep myself immersed in my work, in my craft, in my books, in my blog; I feel all the same problems, all the same disappointments and tribulations, but I do not allow them to keep me from doing the writing and the work that pushes me forward. I keep myself busy and tell myself that I can't stop.

I think that's the way I'm just supposed to be. Maybe that's the way everybody is, maybe we're all just fighting off that emotional and mental inertia that would rather waste days than spend them, even though spending them isn't any harder than not spending them.

I've said many times before that I write because I must, because I cannot allow myself to not write. More and more, I realize the truth in those words, that writing keeps me from falling into stasis, and the depression that stasis breeds. I can tell myself that I feel bad because I'm stressed, because there's a hundred different things on my mind... or I can realize that I feel bad because I allowed myself to slow down and step.

I can realize that I should get back to work... because that's the key to feeling better.

You Really Don't Have To Read This One

Didn't get any novel writing done tonight.

I suppose it's good that I tried, right? I mean, I made the effort, focused on the work, didn't just put it off. And I just couldn't detach myself from my current situation, my current thoughts and worries enough to lose myself in my fantasy world. The character voices are there, but none of us know where to go right now, where the road leads.

I guess you could say after the past couple of days, I just feel tired and really don't have anything to say. Wednesday was especially bad, and if you haven't heard the story, well, there was something of a running Twitter commentary from my phone as I stumbled around campus in an ever-increasing rage, looking for class rooms that did not exist as a result of being guided first by an outdated schedule, and then a schedule where I'd written down wrong buildings and incorrect numbers. Today was better, although I made some poor estimations of how long it would take me to get from work to class and back, so the commute was extremely nervewracking. Also, I lost my parking ticket and had to pay 9 dollars more for parking than I planned and... Jesus, is this really what I'm writing about tonight? The mundane shit that goes on in my life?

No wonder I don't have anything to give to the novel project tonight, there's nothing in this skull of mine that's worth talking about. I'm worrying about things like parking and commute times and the fact that I haven't settled into my classes, and my apartment situation is in all kinds of chaos. I suppose all of these are justifiable things to be distracted by, but, I don't know, I guess I don't like admitting that the shit that I deal with is mundane and normal and boring.

Part of me also worries that this is how the long, slow decline into the non-writing state begins. But then, part of me will always worry about that, I think. I felt it acutely every day I didn't write during the winter break and I'm feeling it now, even as I try to that that voice "fuck you, I tried to write and there's nothing in the tank." You know the voice I'm talking about, surely. It's the dark voice, from junior high, self-doubt, all that good stuff. Or maybe it began earlier than junior high, or middle school, or whatever the hell it was? Honestly, my memories are fuzzy about a lot of things, especially as they relate to myself.

So that's where I'm at, at this moment. I'm stressed about mundane crap and I'm blogging about it as a way to express my feelings, and I can't delude myself into thinking that this makes for compelling reading. In fact, I think I'll be including a warning in the title that you can skip this post, there's no keen insight to be gleaned here, move along, come back tomorrow.

It's weird that out of the past two days, the best thing that's happened to me is that I got what in my opinion is a really good haircut. I usually never get good haircuts, or at least, I never feel good about my hair after it's been cut. But I'm happy with this one, which means it's worth sharing, even if it's ultimately pointless.

So, yeah, there's that. Hopefully I have something more interesting for you all tomorrow. We can only hope, right?

Wherein The Author Relates Something Vaguely Interesting (Maybe) About Himself

A thought occurred to me as I finished up my writing for the night. I glanced over at the clock and, upon noticing the time, thought about how weird it felt to be doing fiction writing at midnight. And it was weird to me, that that felt weird, because it used to be that late at night was the prime writing time, the very best time to do writing. In fact, I have that whole "night owl" persona built up primarily around the idea that I'm a nocturnal entity for the sake of creativity.

And to some extent, it's still true that I do a lot of my work late at night, but I've realized that these things are typically essays or papers, things that are only getting done this late because they're due very, very soon. I don't write late into the night any more. If you look over my twitter updates, it seems the early to late evenings are my writing times now.

If this shift in perspective means anything, I think that it shows how my attitude has changed towards my work. Once upon a time, writing was just something that I did because it was fun, because it felt good to do, because I thought it was cool. It wasn't really a job, it wasn't work, it was just this thing that I did whenever I felt like it, and especially in the beginning, it seemed like I often "felt like it" in the early hours of the morning, while the rest of the world was asleep.

Now, though, it feels like writing is something that's serious, that this isn't just a game any more, if you'll pardon the overly dramatic movie quote. And I think that's reflected in the new hours that I keep. To me, these late night hours have come to represent what is quintessentially "me time." Aside from a couple of exceptions, I'm almost always by myself at this point of the day. My phone doesn't ring. Nobody is going to send me email at this hour. It's one of the few times I can feel really alone.

This is the time when it's okay for me to be selfish. It's the time when I can play video games, or watch episodes of Lost on Netflix, or read a book without interruptions. I can do whatever I want, because the world of responsibility is protected by a comfortable nocturnal shroud that won't lift until the sun returns the next day.

I don't like having to spend this time on important things, "real" things. And now that writing is a "real thing" to me, not just something I do because I feel like it from time to time, but a real, concrete thing that represents a large investment of myself, it no longer feels like it truly belongs with the other nocturnal pursuits. It feels like it belongs to the Day, that time when I'm focused and responsible and dedicated to work, the time when I'm serious and in control.

I'm painting with a fairly broad brush here, to be perfectly honest. In truth, I waste plenty of time during the day just as I do write essays late into the night. But I like to think that my various tendencies and habits reflect some sort of predilection to order in my life, and the fact that I no longer feel like novel writing at one in the morning should reflect some sort of deep personal change.

It might also have something to do with the fact that, just as I noticed tonight, it's always much, much harder to get myself to do some work after I've relaxed for an hour than if I'd just sat down right after getting home and writing for an hour. So there's also that.

Class starts tomorrow. I can't decide if I'm thrilled or distressed by this fact.

These Moments

I really, really like it when I have no idea what I'm going to sit down and write about until I actually sit down and start to write about it. Those moments of discovery, the feeling of being led by whatever creative force lurks within the depths of my mind... it's wonderful. It's the secret joy of the artist and the writer, the personal pleasure that we derive from our work that no reader can ever truly experience.

The reader has it good, don't get me wrong. The reader doesn't know how the story is going to end, doesn't know what will happen. The reader usually won't see all the mistakes that the writer imagines are there, won't think about all the things that "could have been," all the ways that the story could have been better. The reader can love the characters unconditionally and without reservation, and not have to worry about them, except in the context of what will happen to them in the story.

But readers don't get to enjoy the thrill and the mystique of the blank page. They don't get to feel what it's like to have the voices guide you, to realize at the end of a marathon session that you weren't really creating anything so much as recording an even that was playing out in your mind. I'm not the god of my little fantasy world; I'm just the fucking court recorder, the guy in the corner busy listening in and typing it all down.

When it works the way it's supposed to (and this is how it's supposed to work, I think), this whole writing enterprise, this whole damn thing is amazing and wonderful and worthwhile. These are moments that we can't share with anybody, because these intimate moments happen between the writer and the muse. It sounds sappy, it sounds trite, it sounds cliched, but it's true. And the fact that it's not easy, that it's a rare and special thing that only comes after many hours of hard work and self-doubt and worry and effort... well, that just makes it all the sweeter, doesn't it?

These are the moments when it's good to be writing. Not to be a writer, not to have written, but to be writing, to be in the throes of the act itself. These are the moments when it's good and it's thrilling and you can't wait to find out what happens next, and later on, when you try to explain that you have no idea how the story is going to end even though you're the god damn person writing the damn thing and people look at you like you're retarded, these moments are what you're trying to explain to them.

I'm not sure these moments are why I write. I think I've reflected on that many times before, and will many times to come, as my perception of myself and my craft changes with the passage of time. I think, at this current moment in time, that the reason I write is because I am unhappy and unable to not write, that the times in which I wasn't working, wasn't creating, wasn't doing anything to make my dreams happen were some of the darkest moments of my life. Certainly, the saddest and emptiest.

So I don't write for this moments of discovery, these times when it just flows naturally and easily and I can enjoy the process. These moments aren't what drive me to sit down at my desk. That would, to paraphrase one of my favorite movies, be like going out into the woods specifically to find the perfect blossom.

You have other reasons for going out into the forest, but damn if it isn't nice when that perfect blossom manages to come along and find you.

The Secret To Writing Is Time (But Not Quite The Way You Might Think)

When I was a little bit younger than I am now, I used to think that the best career for an aspiring writer like myself was to become a teacher. Think about it; you'd be working with the subject that you really enjoyed most, and you'd have those long summers to devote entirely to your writing. In what other job, aside from actually being a full time writer, would you be able to have so much uninterrupted writing time?

The hilarious truth is that now, I think being a teacher is absolutely a terrible job for a writer, or at least, it would be a terrible job for this writer.

It's not that I don't think teaching is an awesome job. I can remember vividly all the teachers who made an impact on my life, going all the way back to the fourth grade and the first teacher, Mr. Dennis, whose idea of a "Writer's Workshop" project no doubt sparked the interest that would eventually morph into basically the cornerstone of my self-identity. I remember all the teachers who inspired me, who challenged me, who believed in me, and even those that pissed me off and made me work that much harder just to prove them wrong by succeeding, which means that technically, they won. To which I say simply: "well played."

But this isn't meant to be a reflection on teaching, since I'm not a teacher myself. And in fact, this idea of mine, that writing and teaching might not go hand-in-hand has nothing to do with teaching in the slightest. Hell, the job in question could be something like professional basket-weaving, assuming that basket weavers are able to take off months during the summer.

See, I've come to realize that one of the great lies of my life is the idea that I'll get work done "when there's more time." It's always been this belief that as soon as I'm not as busy, I'll have all the time I need to do all the things that I want to do. I remember complaining that it was a bad idea to have NaNoWriMo in November, because November is fucking busy. If you're a student, you've got all the big projects coming together at the same time, and you're typically busy at work, and you've got family obligations that all mean your free time is basically nil. How the hell could anybody find the time to write in that maelstrom of responsibilities and deadlines?

And yet, during those hectic, busy 30 days, I wrote 50,000 words. I wrote every day, never once skipping a day because I didn't feel like it. Even when I was busy. Especially when I was busy.

Compare that to December, which is a month that's characterized by weeks of free time. Even covering extra hours at my library job doesn't equal the workload I had trying to juggle everything I had going on in November, and yet, I didn't even write half as much in December as I did the previous month. Part of that was because I allowed myself to slow down, to back off from that breakneck pace. Part of it was the fact that I decided to take a week off from writing when I thought I was done, and then spent the next two weeks after that struggling to figure out how to get back on track.

Those are all part of it, but there's a deeper truth here, and that's this: for me, it is extremely hard to write when I have all the time in the world.

It's hard to write when I'm on a vacation, when I don't have class, when I'm off for six days from work. It's hard to find the energy, it's hard to muster the motivation, it's hard to do anything other than a rotating cycle of waking up late, playing video games, reading, and falling asleep again.

Now, don't get me wrong, those were very fun things and I feel better having done them, batteries refreshed, and all that. But every day that I wasted just lounging around, I thought to myself "I could, and should, be working. Writing. Doing stuff." And each of those days, even as I relaxed,  I felt myself slipping back into the old habits of not writing, of feeling like I "should" write, instead of telling myself that I "will" write. I worried that maybe I'd backslid completely and I'd lost the spark that drove me through over 60,000 words of my current novel manuscript.

And then I went back to work, pretty much worked open to close the last two days, with another two coming up, and here I am, writing away again, and hopefully in good form. Considering how much I wrote on the novel tonight, how easily it came and how satisfying it was, I'd certainly say that I'm back, and thankfully, I was able to do it in two weeks rather than two years, like last time.

Why is this, I wonder? You could call it inertia, maybe, something about how a body at rest tends to stay at rest and a body in motion tends to stay in motion. Actually, the more I think about it, I realize that's incredibly apt. It's always so much easier to come home from a long, hard day and write for two hours than it is to wake up a Saturday when I have nothing to do and tell myself I'm going to write before I do anything else. The latter has never, ever happened, to the best of my knowledge. The former happened every day for a month and a half straight.

And that leads me back to my main point; if I want to succeed as a writer, if I want to live the dream of writing every day, the secret is not to find ways to cut out larger and larger chunks of my time so I'll have them to devote to writing. The secret, the trick, the true key is to find out how to fill my life, how to keep busy, how to keep my plate full, keep that calendar bustling, because when I'm faced with the prospect of not having time to write, it's then that I carve out those precious 40 minute blocks that powered me through NaNoWriMo, those precious hours that fueled my first novel attempt since I was sixteen.

Because now I realize, now I understand that if I have two whole weeks to do as much writing as I want... I'm going to waste it. I'm going to play video games, and watch movies, and do everything I can to waste as much time as possible. But if I only have a tiny bit of time, if I only have an hour... well, hell, I can't waste that! It's the only hour I have!

And it makes me glad to know that given that single hour, I'd much rather spend it writing rather than doing anything else.

Lost To The Cutting Room Floor

So, a funny thing happened to me tonight.

I sat down to write, as I was doing every day, and told myself that I need to, once again, do every day. It's harder to get back into the swing of things than I would have thought, or would have cared to admit. To be totally honest, I wish like hell I hadn't taken that break, hadn't allowed myself to lapse. I suppose it's a good thing that I'm still thinking about the story, not letting it lapse, but man, I had a good thing there. Why did I break that streak?

Anyway, so I've been working for the past week or so since returning to the work after deciding that I wasn't done. And as I was sitting there, thinking about it, reading over what I'd done, well... I realized that it didn't fit. Any of it. The characters weren't acting in a way that made sense, in a way that worked. I introduced a new narrator and realized, after two chapters, that it was a character that better served in her previous role, because she knew far too much to be a narrator. Quite honestly, in a single chapter from her point of view, we'd probably have all the mysteries of the plot worked out. That's just not good.

So, I deleted everything I've done. I decided not to try and salvage any of it, because I didn't like what was happening, didn't like the direction I'd gone. Better to go back to the last point I was proud of, the last moment that I was really certain of, and try again. So, ultimately, that turns out to be a loss of, oh, I'd say 5,000 words or so, which given the fact that I've been going slower than my NaNoWriMo pace, means that I've lost a pretty good chunk of time.

But sometimes it has to be done. Sometimes, not everything is going to work. I'd rather cut whole chapters than dig myself into a hole. You can break a story that way, lose it entirely. I'd rather not have that happen.

So tonight meant moving backwards, moving further away from the finish line in order to find the trail again. But that's okay, because now I have new ideas about things to try. Maybe it'll be awesome and maybe it won't be; maybe the truth is that it's a mistake to try and draw this story out any longer. I'll face that bridge if I ever come to it, but for now, I have a world that I want to continue to play in, and I have characters with a lot of story left to tell.

Beginnings

And so 2010 begins.

As we move into the next decade, I find myself wondering what it will be, to me and to the world in general. We do not often think about our time in decades, at least not in ways to relate to us personally. I do not look back on the past ten years and think that this was the decade in which I learned to drive, moved out on my own. That this was the decade that I first decided I wanted to become a writer. The decade in which I wrote my first book.

The decade in which I first fell in love. The decade in which I had my heart broken for the first time. And the decade when I moved past those feelings and resolved to carry on.

The 00's (I don't know what that would actually sound like if I said it out loud, but it works well enough on paper) was the second complete decade of my life, and yet it was the most meaningful one to me so far, given that so much of the person I am today was formed in the last ten years. My hopes and dreams, my fears, my desires.

What will the next ten years be? Who will I be, when this new decade draws to a close? What will I be?

I remember thinking, at the beginning of the last decade, where I would be in ten years' time. I was 13, trying to imagine what it would feel like to be 23. It seemed an impossible age, mythical and unattainable. And now here I am, wondering who and what I'll be when I'm 33, and that, too, seems impossible. It does not seem like it could be true, that I'll be 33 one day. That sounds like I'll be an adult, a mature (hopefully), responsible (hopefully) grown up individual. Maybe with a family? Maybe a career? Will I be a father? A husband?

I could never have imagined myself as I am now, at 13. I thought then of things and all that I could do, all that I could have. I could not and did not think of what it would be, how I would feel, what my mind would be.

Time is a strange and curious thing, isn't it?

Ever does it march on, and the only truly constant thing about it is how fluidly and easily it slips away from us, most of all when we least expect it.