Stuart Page's Blog - Posts Tagged "creative-writing"
multi-tasking (writing and social media)
I am not very good at multi-tasking. That’s not to say I’m especially good at single tasking. I’m not. (I have a tendency to hyper-fixate and burn out or else procrastinate and produce nothing.) But multi-tasking is a big challenge for me. I should specify that I can do the simple things: pull a shot of espresso while a teapot fills with boiling water, smile while I take your order, etc. So that is one of my jobs taken care of. However, maintaining a social media presence while writing...these tasks are removed from each other like two lovers sharing a video call. One talks about themselves too much. The other spends too much time masturbating.
I am getting off track.
(Or am I?)
How do you do it? And what exactly should you be doing? Spend an hour scanning and replying to tweets when you could be reading and learning from books in your chosen field? For that matter, how do you spend time reading relevant books when you must also read from literary magazines in advance of submitting pieces to them? And how do you spend time reading literary magazines when your energy is spent so fretfully writing in the hopes that you will finally produce something desirable? How do you develop an audience as a writer, online, when you cannot publish pieces on your blogs and profiles for risk that magazine editors, at a later submission date, will refuse those works for their taken virginity? And of course, how can you justify upping your magazine submission output, in the hopes of something slipping through the slender cracks, when so many groups require payment for each submission?
Do you ever get the sense that you’re performing free labour and then begging people to accept it? I’ve never asked myself this in such terms before. Have you? Are we each other’s competition? How do you feel about that?
I’m very tired.
I am afraid of most people.
I wrote a musical this year in my downtime. Does anybody want to hear it?
…
<3 <3 <3
I am getting off track.
(Or am I?)
How do you do it? And what exactly should you be doing? Spend an hour scanning and replying to tweets when you could be reading and learning from books in your chosen field? For that matter, how do you spend time reading relevant books when you must also read from literary magazines in advance of submitting pieces to them? And how do you spend time reading literary magazines when your energy is spent so fretfully writing in the hopes that you will finally produce something desirable? How do you develop an audience as a writer, online, when you cannot publish pieces on your blogs and profiles for risk that magazine editors, at a later submission date, will refuse those works for their taken virginity? And of course, how can you justify upping your magazine submission output, in the hopes of something slipping through the slender cracks, when so many groups require payment for each submission?
Do you ever get the sense that you’re performing free labour and then begging people to accept it? I’ve never asked myself this in such terms before. Have you? Are we each other’s competition? How do you feel about that?
I’m very tired.
I am afraid of most people.
I wrote a musical this year in my downtime. Does anybody want to hear it?
…
<3 <3 <3
The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa (and being hungry for cheeseburgers)
The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa is a relatively short yet re-playable game about how far friendships can be stretched, how many beatings a man can take, and how we stack the deck against ourselves and pretend not to notice.
This game pushes Ringo into a poverty-induced whirlpool of violence and crime, as the only way to afford food in the early game (apart from when your friend, seemingly at random, shells out for you) is by either beating the yen right out of other dudes’ pockets, or by opportunistically scavenging coins from the unconscious forms of fallen gang members who you just watched get pounded into the dirt. In this way, you become a wild animal, a crow picking at scraps upon city pavements, consuming barely substantial crumbs one fingerful at a time.
Ringo doesn’t have parents. Nobody in the adult world seems especially interested in taking care of him, beyond coaches who, you’ve guessed it, train him to be a better fighter. Ringo’s teacher will present him with lump sums of yen every week if he gets good grades, and he will verbally encourage Ringo, yet this too implicitly rewards those who fight and scavenge on the street; to focus on school and to study effectively at home, Ringo must surely have a full belly, and in order to achieve a full belly, he must roam the city in search of other gang members to steal from. In the early game, I found myself caught in a cycle in which I lost multiple fights in a row, wasted a lot of days recovering in bed, and was always starving. I expected to receive a game over, but it didn't come. Ringo Ishikawa always got back up, no matter how I failed him, no matter how very hungry he claimed to be.
When I was a teenager, I didn’t get into fights. I didn’t smoke. I didn’t drink. I certainly wasn’t left to fend for myself, without parents, money, or food—not for any extended period of time, anyway. However, when I was about sixteen or seventeen, I went through a phase where I struggled to eat. Looking at food made me feel sick. Looking at myself made me feel sick. I replaced breakfast with extra time in bed, which helped ease the sleepless nights. I was recurrently dehydrated. I could eat lunch only on days where I could successfully separate my mind from my mouth and my organs. I had a much easier time with evening meals, though I don’t know why, and not always.
I was hungry a lot. Hungry, and empty.
I remember feeling like I was self-destructing. I often hoped that somebody might jump me on the way home in the dark, like getting into a fight might fix everything, but I wasn’t an initiator, and for whatever reason nobody initiated against me. I had become a ghost, I thought. One night, during the winter, I was looking out at the river that sliced the town in two. I thought about jumping into it from the bridge above. I hoped the shock of the cold might be enough to make me panic and drown. If not, at least it would make me feel something. Suddenly, a man I didn’t know appeared behind me, and said something about it being a nice night. This startled me. I was crying. Silently, I think, though I couldn’t be certain. I tentatively agreed with him. It was a nice night. Freezing cold, crystal clear. I…
Ringo Ishikawa is not a ghost. I don’t believe that he can become depressed. I don’t know if he can starve to death, though I don’t think he can. He can initiate fights and have fights initiated against him. No matter how bad his previous day was, he will sit down at a school bench, if instructed, and read classic literature for you—literature that was, and still is, too intimidating for me to read, regardless of the fullness of my stomach and the health of my bank account, and in spite of my degrees in writing and literature.
All that to say, this game did and did not make me feel like a teenager again.
This game pushes Ringo into a poverty-induced whirlpool of violence and crime, as the only way to afford food in the early game (apart from when your friend, seemingly at random, shells out for you) is by either beating the yen right out of other dudes’ pockets, or by opportunistically scavenging coins from the unconscious forms of fallen gang members who you just watched get pounded into the dirt. In this way, you become a wild animal, a crow picking at scraps upon city pavements, consuming barely substantial crumbs one fingerful at a time.
Ringo doesn’t have parents. Nobody in the adult world seems especially interested in taking care of him, beyond coaches who, you’ve guessed it, train him to be a better fighter. Ringo’s teacher will present him with lump sums of yen every week if he gets good grades, and he will verbally encourage Ringo, yet this too implicitly rewards those who fight and scavenge on the street; to focus on school and to study effectively at home, Ringo must surely have a full belly, and in order to achieve a full belly, he must roam the city in search of other gang members to steal from. In the early game, I found myself caught in a cycle in which I lost multiple fights in a row, wasted a lot of days recovering in bed, and was always starving. I expected to receive a game over, but it didn't come. Ringo Ishikawa always got back up, no matter how I failed him, no matter how very hungry he claimed to be.
When I was a teenager, I didn’t get into fights. I didn’t smoke. I didn’t drink. I certainly wasn’t left to fend for myself, without parents, money, or food—not for any extended period of time, anyway. However, when I was about sixteen or seventeen, I went through a phase where I struggled to eat. Looking at food made me feel sick. Looking at myself made me feel sick. I replaced breakfast with extra time in bed, which helped ease the sleepless nights. I was recurrently dehydrated. I could eat lunch only on days where I could successfully separate my mind from my mouth and my organs. I had a much easier time with evening meals, though I don’t know why, and not always.
I was hungry a lot. Hungry, and empty.
I remember feeling like I was self-destructing. I often hoped that somebody might jump me on the way home in the dark, like getting into a fight might fix everything, but I wasn’t an initiator, and for whatever reason nobody initiated against me. I had become a ghost, I thought. One night, during the winter, I was looking out at the river that sliced the town in two. I thought about jumping into it from the bridge above. I hoped the shock of the cold might be enough to make me panic and drown. If not, at least it would make me feel something. Suddenly, a man I didn’t know appeared behind me, and said something about it being a nice night. This startled me. I was crying. Silently, I think, though I couldn’t be certain. I tentatively agreed with him. It was a nice night. Freezing cold, crystal clear. I…
Ringo Ishikawa is not a ghost. I don’t believe that he can become depressed. I don’t know if he can starve to death, though I don’t think he can. He can initiate fights and have fights initiated against him. No matter how bad his previous day was, he will sit down at a school bench, if instructed, and read classic literature for you—literature that was, and still is, too intimidating for me to read, regardless of the fullness of my stomach and the health of my bank account, and in spite of my degrees in writing and literature.
All that to say, this game did and did not make me feel like a teenager again.
