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.