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.