Joe Peacock's Blog, page 4

How To Help Someone Who Is Suicidal

On May 30, 2011, I tried to take my own life.

The last thing I did before I committed to killing myself was throw my phone into the river behind my house… So, telling me to call the suicide prevention hotline wouldn’t have helped. Not right then.

Not to say that it wouldn’t be well-intentioned, or coming from the right place. It just wouldn’t have done any good, at the moment where you really wish and hope it will.

And there’s the problem.

If you are posting to people who are depressed and suicidal that they should reach out to someone and ask for help, you’re probably doing so out of a place of love and compassion. But, you’re also probably doing it from a position of confusion and helplessness. You don’t know what else to do, and you can’t really get your head around it, so you’re doing what you think is best in the situation and hoping for the best.

It makes sense. The only trouble is, you can’t out-logic an emotional act. It’s not possible. And the bigger the act, the bigger our instinct is to try and help, and when we’re thinking logically, that usually means getting more impassioned and louder and more visible to the person (or persons) who we perceive is in trouble. Only, our timing is off, because it’s only after they’ve attempted suicide (and unfortunately in a lot of cases, succeeded) that the idea to help someone who is suicidal comes into our mind.

This is not a bad thing. It is not a wrong thing. It’s a human thing. It’s also not the right thing.

When people are suicidal, they are not rational. Taking your own life is not a rational decision. It’s a thoroughly and deeply emotional one, and it usually starts from a place of loneliness, isolation, inescapably, and pain. In that state, it’s not easy to reach folks, especially with words. With logic and reason. With anything less than stopping them.

The time for words is well before the suicidal part. It’s in the depression part (which is still deeply emotional, and requires finesse, but reaching out to people who are depressed is the exact right thing to do). It’s before the depression, during the isolation. It’s before the isolation, when they feel segmented and unloved and unaffiliated from any group, despite wanting to be those things.

Complicating the situation a bit more, some people want to be alone. These people are not depressed because they want to be alone. They are not lonely, just alone. And trying to tell the difference when you’re not that way is tricky at best.

So, what are you to do?

Posting the Suicide Prevention Hotline is a step. It’s not the most helpful step, but it’s better than sitting idly by while someone else suffers. Telling them what to do — even in the nicest sense — is also a step. Telling them to just reach out, or to get help, or to ask you for help, or to tell you what’s wrong… Those are still “better than nothing” but they’re also not the most helpful thing.

I know, it’s weird. But until you’ve been there — not just imagined it, okay, but REALLY been there with a gun to your head or a knife at your throat or pills in your stomach… You don’t know what you’re dealing with.

If you’ve had suicidal thoughts, you know that the desire to end your pain is the real goal. And here’s a fun stat: nearly 100% of human beings have wondered what it’s like to kill themselves.

But thinking about suicide and wanting to actually kill yourself are not the same thing. At all. Any more than sadness is the same as depression, or as coffee is the same as espresso, or Cup O Noodles is the same as the ramen you get in Japan. It’s just plain not. Looks the same, seems the same, and if all you’ve ever known, you might be excused for confusing them.

So that’s why I wanted to write this; for those of you who think you get it, or don’t get it at all, but want to help all the same. What I’m about to share with you isn’t meant to discourage you. It’s meant to give you a perspective so you understand what you’re dealing with, if and when you attempt to help.

Suicidal people want out of whatever pain they are in, and they cannot imagine a future outside of that pain. Or, believe the work it will take is not worth it, or is Herculean in effort and unachievable). (Aside; Yes, some want attention and validation. They’re their own case. And to try to lump all suicidal thoughts into the same category is folly, as I mentioned above. Let’s not do that right now, okay?)
They can’t see, hear, or think what you are trying to tell them when they’re suicidal. The only things going through their mind is a) it hurts so much and b) make it stop.
They’ve already considered everything there is to consider, from their own vantage point through shit-colored glasses, and what they saw put them in the situation of wanting to end their own life.

Your job isn’t to tell them how to fix their lives. Your job is to get them to not end it. It’s all about right now, right this very second, every second until they’ve gotten past it. This might take minutes, or hours, or days.

It’s work. Some of us aren’t up to it. And that is okay. But if you choose to take it on; if you make a public display of being an ally or boast wildly on Facebook and Twitter and whatnot how to fix what’s wrong, and it’s as easy as asking for help or dialing this number… Know that you aren’t helping. You’re going through the motions of helping, and I understand it.

But you’re not helping, any more than telling the person in the horror movie they shouldn’t go upstairs. You’re not in the house, and they can’t hear you through the screen.

Suicide prevention is not an armchair activist’s hobby. It’s a real job, and it is going to take grit and determination and physically showing up. It’s going to take so much more than wishing, because if wishes worked, everyone I’ve lost to suicide would come back to life.

If you know someone is actively suicidal, call the police, and then go over to where they are (or call someone close to where they are) and stop them. Bust in the door. Do what you have to do.

If you know someone who seems suicidal and/or depressed (Another side note: THEY’RE NOT THE SAME THING, more on that in the, oh, 12 or so articles I’ve written on the topic), You need to be the one to reach out. Not them.

Not fair? Of course not. All of us are charged with taking responsibility for ourselves and taking care of ourselves. And here you are, faced with someone who isn’t going to do that. If you want them to stick around, you need to be the one to do save them. And I hate that for you, because I know that situation way too well — both from the suicide side and the savior side.

But this is the reality you’re in. You can preach at them to get help and tell them how to solve a problem you don’t have any experience fixing, and they’ll not listen one bit because they’re busy planning something far more convenient, quicker, and permanent.

Or you can do the work, even if it’s not yours to do. So how to do that:

Telling someone “Hey, It seems something isn’t okay. I want you to know that if you ever need someone to just be not okay around, I’m here. And I’ll listen if you want to talk, or we can not talk at all and just have some coffee. Whatever you need in your moment, just know you have someone willing to share it with you” is a good start.
Being present is even better. Show up. Take them out to dinner, coffee, shopping, ice cream. They need to leave the place they are where they feel comfortable working through thoughts of killing themselves. They MUST have an environment change. The cave — be it their apartment or bedroom or a literal cave — is a place of isolationist empowerment. It reinforces whatever narrative is going on in their minds that guides them down this path. You have to take them off that path.
Encourage, and if necessary, force them to get help. The help will work. They need two things before they commit however: the desire to work on the program, and something to live for when the program is over. If you want to be that something, that’s going to help. If you can rally those somethings (kids, loved ones, and so on), even better. Do the hard work of educating those folks on what helps and doesn’t help. You can’t literally force pills down their throat, but you can force their eyes open to a goal to work toward.
Empathy. Not enablement, or babysitting, or even a 100% feeling that you get it. They just need to know you care, and aren’t going to use that against them.

And one thing not to do: remind them of all they have to live for, or tell them how great they have it… you have no idea if that perfect marriage is actually poison, or if that high paying job is a hellhole, and you might be pushing a bruise. And even if they’re 100% peachy keen, don’t for a second think they haven’t already thought about them – they have and they want to die anyway.

Suicide sucks. Period.

Wanting to help is a big thing, and I really am glad you do. And if what you just read seems weird or strange or revelatory, that’s okay — this shit is not rational or common sense. It’s not logical. I hope to God you can’t relate, and never have to.

But reality is a funny thing. It doesn’t care about what makes sense or not. It’s just reality. And in reality, there are people in your life who may end up in a position where they wish to harm and kill themselves. In this situation, they aren’t rational or logical. But they are real.

And so are you.

So do something about it.

I Don’t Care If It Took The Philadelphia Eagles To Get Trump Supporters To Start Asking Questions, And You Shouldn’t, Either

“I cannot believe Trump lied!” a Trump-voting friend of mine, Marc (not his real name) said. 

“Yeah, well… That’s how it’s been this whole time,” I replied. “Only, it wasn’t about anything you cared about, so it didn’t matter.”

“It matters now,” he said.

[image error]Don’t fuck with Eagles (or their fans).

What was the lie that got this Trump apologist and supporter to finally realize he’d been snowed? Was it any of the over 3,000 proven lies that he’s told in the past year and a half regarding healthcare, Hillary Clinton, the Democrats, LGBTQ rights, the Trump Tower meeting, his prior meetings with Russians, his real estate endeavors, immigrants being murders and thieves by default, our trade situation with literally everyone, being a Christian despite being an avowed Athiest, his racist business dealings, or any number of things that are of major importance to the fitness of a person to serve as President of the United States of America? (And no, I’m not bothering to link a single of these things, because HOLY FUCK DO YOU NOT READ THE NEWS, MY GOD. Besides, these fouls are so up front and in your face that If you’re the kind of person who needs proof of these things, you’re already not going to click on them, and I have other shit to do).

Nah. It was about the Philadelphia Eagles, Marc’s favorite football team to the point of religious worship.

 

Trump claims that they took knees during the National Anthem (they didn’t), that they let down their fans (they didn’t), and that they don’t respect the military (of course they do.) So, he disinvited them to the White House. But the real reason is because only five members of the team were going to show up, and he couldn’t deal with the bad publicity of looking weak.

This shouldn’t matter. It’s not only petty and stupid, it’s super inconsequential. Except to Marc, and to hundreds of thousands of Philadelphians who voted for Trump who just felt the cold marble of the floor hitting their chin as they stand back in awe of such egregious and utterly unnecessary lies.

And now, Marc has suddenly become very receptive to what I’ve been arguing with him for nearly two years: that Trump will lie to anyone, about anything, at anytime, in order to appear strong and win whatever game he’s decided matters. He will turn his back on anyone and everyone if it means he comes out ahead. If he’d lie about this — something so minor — in the face of video, print, and image evidence to the contrary, what else would he lie about?

And here’t he kicker: Marc never once said he didn’t think Trump was lying. He knew it. He’s always known it. He argues the “Well, actually” side because Marc sees Trump as the captain of a team he’s on, not as the sitting President of the most powerful nation in the world (and Commander in Chief of the most powerful Military machine the world has ever known). And he’s still not sad he voted for Trump (because hey, Hillary lost, and he hates her more).

But he’s suddenly starting to realize the weight of what it means to put a man like Trump in charge of anything, especially the single most powerful seat on the planet.

Marc is now motivated to learn. He wants to know what other things out there he has been misled on that matter to him. He’s aghast and paying attention, finally.

[image error]If he’d lie about this… What else?

I should be laughing right now. Or fuming, that it took something so fucking petty but which matters so much to him to finally open his eyes and feel some of the pain, since he lacks empathy for every other group who has been hurt by Trump (or soon will be). But you know what? I feel relief. Someone in my circle with whom I’ve had some loud, drawn out, pretty deep debates that have threatened not only our friendship but also the bone structure of my hand as I nearly slammed it into a brick wall more than once, just had a light go off in his head. And I’m not about to spend what little currency in truth I have with this guy on lecturing him on shit that will bounce off the surface, and perhaps drive him back to the defensive, thus losing him to Trump again.

All of this to say: if you know anyone in Philadelphia right now who voted for Trump and they’re beginning to crack a little and be vulnerable, do not take that opportunity to prove how right you are (and were all along). It’s wasted, and it’ll do far more harm than good. Like an abused spouse who is finally building up the nerve to walk away, taking the chance to validate yourself might make them feel more of a victim than they already do. They already know how to live with THAT abuse; your new attack is something they may not be able to cope with. And besides, do you really need to punish them right now? They’re waking up after a two year voluntary coma to realize that they CHOSE to do this to themselves.

Nothing you say or do will ever hurt more than that.

Take the fucking win.  

So, The World Is Evil, And You Feel Completely Useless…

I almost did something this morning that I have changed my entire life to avoid doing: I almost ranted on social media.

I know… Pretty boring confession, especially considering the climate of our current society. Everyone’s got something to rant about these days, and everyone has the means to do so to their hearts’ content. It used to be a daily thing for me. I even made a career out of it at one point. But ultimately, it was unhealthy and leaving it all behind has been beyond beneficial. I smile more. I appreciate my daily life. I produce books instead of trickling ideas into a never-ending stream of internet piss. I have stopped screaming into the void (for the most part).

[image error]This sculpture is titled “Screaming into the void.” Feels appropriate.

But still, some current events get under my skin, especially those dealing with hypocrisy, and VERY especially those dealing with a particular religious group for whom hypocrisy is supposed to be a sin, and yet they indulge in it almost by the hour. And since quitting my job to write full time, I’ve found myself with much more time between writing chapters in my books and that time has been slowly allowing my walls around my social media behavior to erode.

When I caught myself mid-rant, I stopped and immediately texted my friend Casey (whom you’ve heard of, I’m sure, if you’ve read this blog for any time). We have a mini support group for former social media ranters, among other things. And when I told him what happened, he immediately came back with his own confessions. It turns out, you guys, that we are living in a profoundly toxic society, and it’s getting worse by the day. And neither Casey nor I are capable of ignoring this fact.

Of course, It’s not new and it’s not sudden, it’s been happening for a very long time. Our coping mechanisms work, but they aren’t iron-clad, and sometimes we find ourselves in a pure blinding rage at just how gross things have gotten. Our natural instincts are to fight tooth and nail against evil and oppression. We both dealt with bullying growing up, and we both have zero tolerance for bullies, hypocrites, liars, thieves, and very especially Nazis.

We’ve both dealt with some guilt around the idea of “not doing enough” to fight it, at various points in the past few years. In fact, going on two years ago, I deleted my Facebook account permanently in part because the days’ events had driven me to form an anti-facist group as a joke, and over seven thousand people joined in 48 hours. The conversations went from “Yay us, we’re going to fight the Nazis!” to “We need to show up at every event and fucking murder these peckerwoods” in very short order, and on the advice of no fewer than three lawyer friends of mine, I closed the doors and threw away the key.

I started a very unhealthy response to a very unhealthy facet of modern society. And something dawned on me at that time, and has stuck with me since: Nazis aren’t a new occurrence. They’re not “back.” They’ve always been here. We just took our boots off their neck long enough to get some air, and like cicadas emerging from the soil after decades of dormancy, they appeared in swarms and made a lot of annoying noise.

My instinct is to fight Nazis — not verbally or theoretically, but to punch these fucking pieces of shit until they swallow enough teeth and blood that they’re too busy puking to talk shit.

You see? That’s not healthy. That’s not something I need to be doing, not right now. It’s a tactic of the enemy. It’s becoming them. I’m the wrong guy to stand at the front and lead a movement against hate, because I have a TON of hate in my heart. I run the risk of doing more harm than good for any movement against bigotry, hatred, racism, and other things. I’m a bouncer. I’m the guy in the back guarding the door, not the guy out front telling people how to appropriately handle things like this. And neither is Casey.

[image error]This is 100% appropriate to do, at the 100% appropriate time. But I feel like doing it literally every day, and wouldn’t be able to NOT do it at the first provocation. And that’s why I shouldn’t be leading rallies.

And yet, he is feeling profound guilt that he’s not doing more to help. He’s not volunteering his time for political candidates who oppose these shitheads. He’s not spending time at the local food shelter feeding the homeless. He’s angry all the time, and feels like a hypocrite because he’s not dedicating his all to fighting these people and their disgusting, toxic, nauseating bullshit.

I reminded him that his entire body of work is in games and game art. He makes beautiful things people spend entire months with, which bring them profound joy and a much needed distraction from the day to day pain and poison of our modern society.

“That’s a spin,” he said. And I agreed that sure, it is. But, that work pays for him to keep a roof over the heads of two future adults, and keep those two future adults fed and raise them right, which is another huge slice of his “doing good” pie. So here we have a man who is raising children with a strong moral code, a profound sense of right and wrong, confidence to speak up when someone needs defending, and a general sense of how to be part of the solution — and he’s able to afford their raising by working in an industry on a top-tier game title that brings happiness and joy to millions.

If we’re putting numbers against it, all of that accounts for at least 75% of his goodwill pie. Add in the fact that he plays therapist to a novice cyberpunk author (me!) who is actively trying to be a part of the solution by writing novels that illustrate our current society in the framework of our inevitable consequences, instead of indulging in severely unhealthy and functionally useless social media ranting… That’s at least another 5%. So 80% of his pie chart is now full of good stuff.

“So, if you feel you need to do more to do good, tell me — what part of your current work and being a father are you looking to stop doing, so you can do something else ostensibly ‘good’?” I asked.

Of course, he had to laugh, because the answer is none of it. He’s already doing good, just by being himself. There’s still 20% of his pie that he could easily devote to more productive social things and maybe he will. But he cannot be so unfair to himself as to say he’s doing nothing to help. In my accounting, I’m seeing a balance sheet with far more “good” than “nothing” in the total columns.

I imagine you’re the same. You can’t not be. You have to be sitting there wondering what more you can do. The answer is, probably a lot more. I know I feel that way. But in that, you need to take account of what it is you already do, and honestly ask if it’s contributing to an overall positive experience for yourself, those around you, and the world. I imagine the answer is already a huge yes.

We aren’t bad people because we aren’t dropping everything to go man a picket line or punch Nazis at rallies or throw in full kitty with whatever political representative swears they’ll fight these folks. We’re human beings. Our only mistake was being decent to indecent people. We followed the Golden Rule and gave these jerks a platform to have their opinions, because that’s fair.

Only, it’s not, because Nazis and hypocrites and bullies don’t deserve fair. They’re already not fair. They’re not playing by the rules, so the rules do not apply to them.

The best way to beat these assholes is to be kind to one another, stand by each other, support each other, and EXCLUDE them. Exclude them from any podium. Exclude them from any microphone. Exclude them from your social media feed. Exclude them completely and totally. And if they force their way onstage or through a door you’ve forbid them to go through, THEN you call on a person like Casey or me, who are more than happy to wail the fucking shit out of them.

Not ignore; exclude. Exclusion is active. Ignoring is passive. You don’t pretend they don’t exist; you actively acknowledge that they do exist and then actively lock them out.

That’s our part in this. We are warriors. We fight. Sure, we know how to politic and theorize and postulate and discuss. But when someone pushes our buttons, we lose any and all ability to participate in those things, which is why we shouldn’t be out front leading this rebellion. We are incapable, in this instance, of being the kinds of leaders who should be out front. Our time, hopefully, won’t ever come. I hope we won’t have to escalate the war. I hope we can win with kindness and common sense. I hope we, all of us, can shove these fuckers out the door and lock it behind us and move back into a world where Nazi’s feelings aren’t being considered in thinkpieces and hot takes, because FUCK THEIR FEELINGS, THEY’RE NAZIS.

But just because my fists aren’t bloody and scarred just yet doesn’t mean I’m doing nothing. And the same goes with you.

Make no mistake – we are at war. The good of the world is under siege by selfish, manipulative, gross, lying, evil people who want to literally bring back Nazis — real, no kidding evil scourge Nazis. And we won’t win by becoming them. We win by beating them. Hate doesn’t kill hate, it just makes more hate.

We have to beat them with love. Love for our children, love for our community, love for each other. We have to unify against them not the way they unify against us, but in the way that actually works: by making the world a truly better place, piece by piece, individually. By doing good work that helps people, even if it makes you happy or doesn’t feel like sacrifice to do so.

You’re doing good. Keep doing good. And if things get to a point where Nazis need to be punched, trust me — there’s a bunch of us just waiting. But right now, there’s still time to win a better way. There’s still opportunities to shut them down and silence them before they can make things worse. There’s still a chance that we can win the right way.

If you want to do more:

Shut down sexists when they are sexist. Tell them what they said wasn’t cool, and they need to not do that.
Shut down racists when they are racist. Stand up for anyone and everyone around you who needs it.
Don’t be sexist, racist, or homophobic.
Do not tolerate hypocrisy. Point it out and highlight it when you see it.
Refuse to do business or support anyone who actively help and support racists, sexists, homophobes, or other evil people.

You don’t need an invite to a rally to start a revolution. Other people aren’t required for you to make your own stand. Chances are, there’s dozens or even hundreds of people you interact with in your daily life who are also scared to speak up, or feel they aren’t doing enough, or otherwise feel the world is completely fucked and don’t know what to do about it. Being a voice against hate when the hate happens is lighting a candle in the darkness. It only takes one.

And sadly, it’s not enough to tweet or Facebook or Instagram or post memes or whatever. It just fucking isn’t. You can keep doing those things, but they’re not the same as telling the racist asshole at Starbucks treating black customers like criminals that they’re being a racist asshole. It’s not the same as stopping the racist asshole at the public park from calling the cops because black people are trying to barbecue peacefully. It’s not the same as directly, purposely, and sternly confronting people doing bad, when they’re doing bad, and stopping them from doing bad.

[image error]We’ve all seen this lady calling the cops on black people for being black in a park trying to barbecue. This is the appropriate use of social media: shame the bad people.

Now, recording them and shaming them? Yes. Spreading the word about their bad behavior? Yes. You don’t have to yell and scream, you can easily make an example of them in thousands of ways. But what doesn’t help is basic armchair activism. It’s just ranting on social media, and it doesn’t do anything besides make you feel like you’re doing something when you’re not. It’s not enough to complain on Facebook about a dog shitting on the carpet and expect the dog to care. You have to catch it in the act, admonish it, rub its nose in it, and teach it what happens if it does it again. THEN post it on Facebook all you want.

And that’s the 20% that’s missing from all of our lives right now — the simple acts in your day to day life that confront and destroy the fascists. If you want to do more, there’s your opportunity. Grand thoughts of quitting your job and dedicating 100% of your time to fighting the current crop of bad guys are awesome, and if you have the financial and scheduling means to be able to do so, please do. But for most of us, these thoughts just perpetuate a feeling of helplessness and uselessness. They’re unachievable because they are grand, and the result is a pendulum swing the other direction into thinking you’re incapable of doing anything, and are a total piece of shit because of it.

It’s not true. You’re already doing good. You can be doing MORE good, yes. So be brave and do good when you have the chance. Stand up against the assholes when you see them, not later on social media. If you’re not a fighter, then record and post their batshit behavior. Yell for help. Scream FIRE! and get a swarm of people around the person being bullied. Vote against the shitheads in every election. Give them no quarter when they come to your town for a rally. If you run a business, shut your doors to them and refuse service. Teach your children that they are to fight these people, and never allow them space to breathe.

Of course, I don’t mean this to apply to anyone you disagree with. That’s what THEY do. Disagreements happen. Different political and social views are necessary in a healthy society. Remember, the far right wants to silence all these differences and eliminate them, literally. THAT’S what we can’t tolerate.

You already don’t tolerate it in your head, or you wouldn’t be thinking these things. Congrats: YOU ARE A DECENT PERSON WHO IS ALREADY DOING GOOD. You don’t need to change the good you’re doing. If anything, you simply need to show it off more, in places you already go and live and work and function.

This is how we win: not with grand gestures and massive life change, but with simply applying the good we already know how to do, when it needs to be applied — and not a second later.

It might sound brave to leave everything behind and run for office, or volunteer for someone running for office, or join a huge demonstration, or lead an anti-facist group, or whatever else. But real bravery is cutting in when the chortling frat boys are making fun of someone at work, or stepping between a pushy man hitting on a woman who isn’t interested on the subway, or standing beside a couple of black teenagers at a Starbucks who were doing nothing wrong.

Or, in Facebook or forum threads, make it clear that asshole behavior isn’t tolerated. If you run a group or a forum, excommunicate with extreme prejudice anyone who is overtly sexist, racist, bigoted, or otherwise evil on the first offense. Stand up for those who are being targeted. Make your voice heard, when it needs to be heard. Don’t simply add more noise to cacophony.

Or, apply your writing, artistic, musical, or performance talents toward telling stories that help people see what’s wrong and more, how to do something about it. Or, simply to bring joy to those who need it, in a time where we ALL need it.

You don’t have to throw punches to resist. You simply have to apply an equal and opposite force against the oppressors when it helps most: at the point of oppression.

Until then, keep doing that good work.

 

On Writing, Aside #1: The Difference Between Aspirations and Goals

“Hope in one hand, shit in the other, and see which gets full faster.” — My dad.

“Without hope, a dream is just a wish you’ll never have granted.” — Also my dad.

 

I used to think my dad contradicted himself a lot with his cliches, and then I got older. I realized that a lot of what I thought was one thing was actually two distinct but related things. I’ve since learned that aspirations are everything you hope will happen, while goals are what you must do to make anything happen.

I only have a few goals for Marlowe Kana:

The characters are believable.
The plot makes sense from beginning to end, and everything connects.
It’s fun to read.
And hopefully, it makes a few points about our current society.

But as for aspirations… Well, I hope that one day it is celebrated as a return to the core of cyberpunk’s ethos, which is to tell of a future formed from our present, centered around technology’s role in our social evolution (or de-evolution). I hope it is the start of a larger framework for more stories for Marlowe, both from before and from after the events in the current series. I hope to write like Neil Gaiman. I hope to see a seventh release of action figures based on the universe. I hope to be knighted. I hope there’s a national holiday for Marlowe Kana.

This is a quick summation from Stephen Shapiro, which I found while Googling for images related to aspirations and goals:

In addition to goals, there are aspirations. Many people view these as being the same or similar, but they quite different. The origin of the word “goal” comes from the Old English word gal which means obstacle or boundary, and is related to the world gælan which is “to hinder.” Goals then, by definition, can inhibit. And we typically use goals as a way of overcoming these barriers. Think about sports, such as American football. You push hard and struggle to move the ball past 400 pound linebackers with the ultimate objective to move past the goal line; your destination.

Conversely, look up “aspiration” and you will find that its origins are similar to the words “spirit” and “inspire”. They are all derived at some level from the Latin word aspirare which means “to breathe upon.” It is believed that the connotation is “to breath life into” or “panting with desire.” Quite simply put, goals are logical and calculated. Aspirations are emotional and inspirational.

So there is a difference between goals and aspirations. Goals are about typically about convergence, narrowing, and focusing in on an outcome. Therefore they can limit and create a myopic view of the world. On the other hand, aspirations are expansive. They create new possibilities. There are many paths and options for you. And you have a wide peripheral vision, sensing new opportunities as they arise.

I think his point on “inhibiting” is that goals absolutely do narrow your focus, and he doesn’t want people losing track of their greater aspirations by focusing too hard on goals. But I think that’s a bit erroneous. There’s a well-known “secret” that sherpas tell aspiring climbers of gigantic mountains never to look up while they’re climbing. It freaks people out to see how much farther they have to go. The heights are massive, and the work to achieve them is doubly so. Instead, they tell them to always look behind them at the ground they’ve covered. It shows that progress is being made and keeps them climbing.

I think goals are like that. They are measurable before and after. They serve as both destinations and as markers of a journey. But the best way to achieve any goal is to have a larger goal above it. So I see his point. But if I let my aspirations govern my measure for success in writing this series, I’d be in a ditch right now with the cheapest bottle of booze I could panhandle for (or the most expensive I could shoplift), crying my eyes out for the 564th straight day. It would murder me, slowly and painfully.

Putting it bluntly: I’m writing 1) a cyberpunk dystopian social critique, 2) starring a geenetically engineered super soldier celebrity, 3) who has been used by everyone since childhood for their own devices, convincing her that she really does want this 4) because it’s what society wants from her, 5) and it breaks her and everyone she loves.

This is pretty niche. It’s not exactly Harry Potter. But my goal isn’t to make it Harry Potter. It’s simply to make it, hopefully at a skill level higher than when I started, while having fun telling a story I’ve always wanted to tell.

…But on the other side of that coin, Harry Potter wasn’t Harry Potter until J.K. Rowling made it Harry Potter, and she only did that by writing the next word after the prior, finishing the next chapter after the last, releasing the next book after the the current one, and keeping on with keeping on until it was done.

It also helps that it is a work of genius, appeals to the inner child in every one of us, tells a story of unity and equal opportunity and dealing with bullies and magic and everything everyone needs to read in their lives.

So even if I aspire in my wildest dreams to write the next Harry Potter, reality has a firm grip around my goals — which sounds limiting, until you realize that reality is what you make it.

I believe it’s impossible for any aspiration to be achieved without goals, and I believe that each goal should be its own thing. If you reach it, awesome — go for the next. If you don’t, set new ones until you reach them, and then, go for the next thing. This is the only thing that keeps me sane. I cannot let my aspirations have a home in my head while I’m trying to achieve a goal, because it will overwhelm me and make me think it’s all impossible. It’s eating a whole porterhouse steak in one bite. It’s just not possible (or healthy). It’s running a marathon in one step. I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’m just saying, you know… Good luck.

I see the whole thing (as my carefully chosen Featured Image suggests) like climbing a mountain. You only get to the top one toehold at a time, and every one you get, you have to celebrate. Because there you are — in the clouds, somewhere, well above where you started. And right now, my reality is that I’m on Volume 4 of a nine-volume series. I’m 4/9ths up the mountain I chose to climb. I’m farther than I was, and I’m not sitting on my couch wishing I was already above the clouds. I’m climbing that damn mountain. That’s my goal.

[image error]The difference in a nutshell

 

When I get to the peak, I’ll see two things: a view I’ve never seen before, and all the other mountains yet to climb. And at that point, I’ll decide which mountain to climb next. That’s my aspiration.

Aspirations are powerful. But without goals, they’re inert. They may never come true, but they are the fuel for the engine that makes the journey possible. To that end, do not let your aspirations be your goals. They will crush you under their weight (and if they don’t, they aren’t large enough!). You will fail because your aspirations are supposed to be out of your reach. You’re supposed to work toward them, and that’s what goals are for.

And by all means, celebrate every single time you achieve a goal, because that’s the real shit right there. That matters far more than any dream. You DID the thing. This isn’t a pipe dream anymore. It exists, because of you.

I celebrate cvery chapter I complete with a nice scotch. I celebrate every volume I complete with a very specific, very special cigar that I bought a box of, just for celebrating completed volumes. I celebrate every single achievement, because it’s something I decided to do and then I did it. Something new exists because of it. I’m not even worried about my aspirations, because they’re safely out of reach and serve, like the north star, to guide me along this path of goals I’ve set.

Friday Feelings: “Being The Strong One”

I read a quote today that pissed me off:

[image error]Isn’t that great? It’s a typewritten plea for help, made into a square for perfect Instagrammability.

(In case the image didn’t come through, the quote is: “The problem with being the strong one is that no one offers you a hand.”)

This is bullshit. It’s not a lie, but bullshit all the same. Bullshit isn’t always a lie. It’s just not the truth. And I know, because I’ve lived it.

I used to be “the strong one.” In my family, my friend group, my marriage… I was always putting myself under others as the rock and the foundation to lift them up when they needed it, and sometimes even when they didn’t. It was always appreciated, of course (except when it wasn’t, because sometimes people don’t WANT your help, even if they need it. They want to figure it out on their own, solve their own issues, and be their own savior. But that’s another post for another time). For years, I would always sit there dumbfounded when it was my turn to need help, wondering where everyone was and who was going to lift me up. I was miserable. I suffered in silence as no one volunteered their hand to pull me out of the muck whenever I stumbled my way into it.

I was resentful for years. And then I figured it out, the very hard way: the real problem with being “the strong one” is that I didn’t know how to ask for help and was too afraid to learn how. And it put me in the hospital as a result. More on that in a bit.

Here’s a pretty deep, probably already-known-but-not-yet-accepted truth: Your persona is not you. The way you behave, act, think about yourself, present yourself, and generally are on a day to day basis — especially around other people — is an act, even if you don’t realize you’re acting. It’s a story your ego tells you about yourself, so that you can believe the you that you want to be is the you that you really are.

Think back to your last few quiet moments alone, when you were also generally happy (even if those moments are rare). Maybe you were playing a game and enjoying it, or watching a movie or show, or chilling with your dog or cat (or in my case, both). Be honest with yourself and ask this one question: Were you behaving the same way you do with friends and strangers while in the comfort and confines of your personal space? Or were you just you, sitting there doing you stuff, thinking simple thoughts, and generally existing in peace?

This may be tough to imagine or accept. I understand. Right now, you’re reading some guy’s blog and having conversations with yourself about strength and weakness and why things hurt. If you’re genuinely looking for an answer, the first thing you have to do is drop the persona and allow yourself, even if for a second, to admit the truth. And the truth is, when no one is watching or paying attention, you are really pretty boring. And that’s a good thing. It means you’re not putting on a show so that other people have a picture of you that you want them to have. It means you’re being honest with your existence. It means you can relax and simply be.

For some people, instilling a picture of how strong they are in other peoples’ minds is vital. It may be a defensive measure, so they don’t get picked on. It may be a validation tool, so they can be called upon in times of weakness and thus feel important. Or, it could be as simple as wanting to be there for people because you genuinely love them, even at your own detriment. But being “the strong one” absolutely relies on everyone else knowing you are “the strong one” — and that’s where the unhealthy bit begins.

[image error]Like steroids, looking strong doesn’t necessarily correlate to being strong.

When you’re the one hurting, and no one comes around to make sure you’re okay, how does that make you feel? If you answer anything other than “resentful” then you’re in the super vast minority. You can’t help but be angry that no one is paying attention to you in your time of need, if you’re always paying attention to them in theirs. But why would they leave you hanging?

If you’re making a habit of giving yourself to others who don’t give back, you need to ask yourself: is it because they don’t love you like you love them, or is it because they don’t know how to help you because you’ve never let them or told them how?

My dad taught me that you train people how to treat you. In any situation, over time, patterns emerge. We are creatures of habit and routine. Our brains default to reaction to pattern simply because it’s more energy efficient than actively thinking all the time. And if in every situation where you need help, you never ask for it, people grow accustomed to the idea that you don’t need help (if, indeed, they even know you are in pain, which is something that goes hand in hand with being “the strong one” — being unable to admit when you’re in pain).

My idea of being “the strong one” drove me to a complete mental collapse where I attempted to take my own life. in 2011, the stresses of being a savior to everyone eventually did me in. I slipped into a deep depression. And no one came to save me. I blamed them for it: how could they possibly not know how much pain I am in? How can they not see? And because it must be obvious to them, they must be electing not to help me.

I went angry and resentful to sad and nearly unable to function. And one day, I just decided it was time to end the misery for myself, since no one was going to come in and save me from it.

Come to find out, no one knew the severity of my pain. No one had a clue. It was a major shock to any who found out just how bad things had gotten. I’ve never discussed this publicly, so the fallout was limited mostly to friends and family; the people closest to me. When they found out, they reacted first with shock, and then with sadness, as is often the case in these situations. It’s the people whose personas demand that they are impervious to pain, unflappable, unyielding, and able to handle anything who are most at risk for suicide. It is this very persona that gets people killed because it keeps them from being able to ask for help in the first place.

It’s like drowning, and being too afraid to raise your hand above the surface of the water to signal you are in trouble… To the rest of the people at the beach, it’s just water rolling in, and water rolling out. They are none the wiser that you are just below the surface and running out of air.

I realized, only after deciding to choose living instead of dying, that the vast majority of how I lived my life was bullshit. Again, not a lie… Just not the truth.

In the aftermath of all of that, I learned a lot of very powerful, but very simple truths.

One of them is that acting strong is weak, because it’s just an act. Real strength comes from admitting fault, failure, weakness, and other spots where improvement is needed because it’s only then you can improve them.

Another is that asking for help is not weak. It’s actually strong to admit when something is beyond your grasp, because it enables you to find a way to reach it. If someone else grabs it and hands it to you, you still got it. So what’s the damn difference if they know you couldn’t reach it? So what? Why is that some big secret? You have it now, that’s all that matters. Say “thank you” and go on about your business.

When you add the two together, they completely invalidate any idea whatsoever that being “the strong one” is, in fact, being the strong one.

So that’s why the quote above really stabbed at me. If you’re not strong enough to admit when you need help, you’re not the strong one. If you’re sitting around hoping someone will save you, you’re not doing anyone any good.

You’ve got to learn how to be humble if you want to learn how to be strong. You’ve got to stop being afraid of appearing weak. Fear is the worst reason to stay silent, because that’s fear’s ONLY job: keeping you in your place. If you let fear keep you from getting out of a bad place, it wins.

[image error]This is more like it.

 

I’m sure you’ve heard before that bravery is not the absence of fear; it’s the acceptance that you are afraid and doing it anyway. To that end, strength is not the absence of weakness. It is the acceptance of the parts of you that you can’t change, and the constant work to adapt via the parts of you that you can. It’s looking fear in the face and admitting you’re afraid, which takes all of its power away. It can’t stop you anymore.

If being “the strong one” is causing you pain, you need to ask yourself why that is — is it because you’re truly alone and isolated and everyone around you is nothing but users and opportunists leeching off your amazing strength? Then those aren’t friends, and you’re foolish for letting them stick around. Shed them and be alone, it’s better that way.

But you and I both know that’s probably not the case. There likely ARE some opportunists and users around you, but you already know who those people really are. The ones you’re most sad about are the ones you thought better of, who disappointed you in your time of need. But before you start Instagramming and Facebooking and Tweeting those cute square prefab “woe-is-me” feels, maybe ask yourself…

Did they even know you needed help, and how to help you? And if not… Why didn’t you ask?

[image error]This is the truest thing I’ve ever read.

(And in a future post, we can discuss what it means if they did and left you hanging anyway… The ending is: why be sad? You just figured out which of those boxes you’ve been stacking up around are really empty, and can be thrown away.)

On Writing, Pt. 6: “Flow” (or, The Actual Writing Part Of Writing A Novel)

If you ever wanted to shut yourself out from the joy of writing a novel, much less a nine volume series, just think of how long it’ll take.

That’ll do the trick, every damn time. And that’s why the power of being in “Flow” is so important, for me at least. But what is it? And how does one even get there?

Flow is the feeling of being INSIDE the writing, and having absolutely no hesitation whatsoever getting it out. It’s trance-like. You’re there. You’re in the moment. You can’t not write. You see everything clearly, feel it all deeply, and your fingers fly across the keyboard. But it’s not just that. It’s so much more.

Flow isn’t the process of writing lots and lots at a clip without a break. It’s not creative inspiration. It’s not some bright swirling thing that empowers you into Limit Break Mode where all of your writing comes out over 9000 (which I realize is blending Final Fantasy with Dragonball but hey, I can’t help it, I’m in Flow, it’s just coming out).

And would you look at that, someone has created Cloud vs. Trunks fanart specifically for my mixed metaphor! Well, not really. Credit: Abremson @ DeviantArt

I can jam my fingers into keys and make words appear without any hesitation, anytime I want. But to actually produce something worth reading? To describe what’s going on and how each character is feeling about it accurately, such that it completely clicks inside me as an authentic experience for whomever I’m writing about (even if it’s an entire city, or an entire country, or just one person)? That’s Flow. That’s the magic. And if I’m not in it, I’m definitely outside of it, which is where things like Writer’s Block happen.

But let me back up a second. To understand the difference, and why and how Flow shows up, you have to know how I approach writing. For me, there are two perspectives when I am writing:

Outside the writing: This is when I write what I imagne, see, think, hear, touch, smell, experience, or conceptualize, on the surface. I stand on the outside of the subject, and I observe it. I piece it together, then describe it in words. This is the state I am usually in when I write any kind of review, or documentary scriptwriting, or historical analysis. It’s also the state I’m in when I’m plotting Marlowe Kana, deciding who is going to do what and where, what happens, why… It’s setting up all the dominoes and tipping them, watching them fall, making sure each one connects to the next. And it is hard work, especially if you miss a domino placement here or there and realize they didn’t fall right, and you have to rework the pattern.

Inside the writing:  I am a miniature me, inside the actual events of the story in my own head. I’m feeling every feeling, thinking every thought, reacting just as the characters do to what’s going on. I am not just setting up the dominoes into the pattern they need to fall in. I’m actually on top of the dominoes, running across them as they fall. Or, I am under one of the dominoes, dodging to avoid it as it falls just in time to be in front of the next.   Or I am pushing the next one over so it falls right. I think every thought every character has. I react emotionally and sometimes even physically — I can’t tell you the number of times Meghan or the dogs have investigated my office when they hear me talking out loud, shouting, sobbing… I’m in there, with the damn dominoes as they fall. This is the narration. This is the storytelling. This is, for me, the actual act of getting my story out. This is the “writing” part of writing.

In my older writing, I mostly wrote about things that happened in my life. So, I never had to bother with the first perspective. There wasn’t much to set up, craft, connect, create or flesh out. When I wanted to emotionally connect with readers on a topic close to my heart, all I had to do was remember it. I lived it. I was there. All I had to do was tap that vein, bleed on the page, and then sum it all up with what I learned.

Easy? No. But far, far easier than inventing everything out of whole cloth.

[image error]…Some inventions, however, don’t really deserve to exist.

When I’m writing fiction, Flow happens primarily in the second perspective. It’s not hard at all for me to achieve a flow when I’m at the whiteboard (well, mine’s black with neon markers, but I guess the term “whiteboard” isn’t so much an adjective describing how it looks as it is a noun anymore). I can jot out plot elements and beats and chapter breaks with no issues. I can get interrupted and go right back to it. I can take coffee breaks, dog-petting breaks, “look out the window yet again and see if the mail carrier has arrived with that damn check I’ve been waiting on for a month” breaks…

It’s no different than reporting. I’m describing the events that I see in my head as they show up. I’m putting them into a sequence. I’m editing that sequence so that it makes sense. I’m deleting crap that doesn’t fit, adding in new things as they pop into my brain… It’s all the prelim work for writing. And on the surface, it’s the truly fun part of writing a novel. This is where all the ideas come from. It’s just “what if this happens?” and “How would she react to this information?” and “What could happen here that completely throws all of this into (even more) chaos?” Yes, there’s a flow to it, but it’s not “Flow” as I understand it. It’s not a transcendent state of existence. It’s just doing the work that needs to be done, and rarely do you ever get stuck. When you do, fixing it is as simple as erasing some stuff on a whiteboard, or deleting nodes in a mindmap, or shifting your outline a bit.

This is the mechanics of storytelling, and it all happens “Outside” the writing.  This is all the goo you sift through in just about every class, tutorial, video, book, or other educational piece on how to write a story. Three-act plays, hero’s journey, all that. It’s framework. It’s structure. And while it is all very useful in every kind of writing, it is downright essential in fiction. Without this, your story will meander and stray and break. You will have “Act two” problems and “Act three” problems and relationship problems and plot holes and Deus Ex Machina and all the terms you hear in all the movie and book review videos you subscribe to on YouTube.

(There will be many, many parts of this series dedicated to each and every point I just made above, but for now, it’s enough to lump all of it into one pile that is the mechanics of telling a story — and for me, all of it sits outside of the actual narrative aspect of putting words on the page. )

Once I’ve done all of that, it’s finally time to sit down and start on word one of paragraph one of page one of the novel. I have to get “Inside” the writing and put it on the page, how it happens in my head. And this is where EVERYTHING GOES TO SHIT, and half the time it just won’t come out.

Or, worse… It all comes out at once, and fights for dominance in my mind. To wit, it’s drinking from the firehose. I can’t pace any of it, much less place it in its proper sequence. I can’t feel the character’s thoughts on the subject at hand. I can’t see them reacting like humans would. They’re like those pop-up targets on a gun range, appearing to let you know that they are in fact where you told them to be, but they have absolutely no interest in being there. They’re cut-outs. They’re props. The situation is manufactured. Nothing feels honest.

And I’ve got 79,999 more words to go.

And that’s just for THIS volume. As of this writing, I’ve got six more to do. It’s every bit as annoying and frustrating as writing a mandatory report in high school. Besides, I’ve already done the hard work, right? I’ve already come up with the story. I’ve already made it make sense in the outline, and in the breakdowns, and in the chapter summaries! I’ve already done this. The story is there, in my damn head. Why can’t it just appear on the page the way it needs to so I can get on with the really fun bits of getting the next volume plotted?

Because I can’t, that’s why.

[image error]Someone’s gotta push that boulder up the hill… And since it’s my boulder, I guess I’m the guy.

It’s literally this simple: If it’s going to exist, I have to be the one to put it out there. And that means typing word after word, separated with punctuation in places and paragraph breaks in others. Over and over again, all day, every day, for weeks at a clip.

The only thing I’ve ever done in my life that even remotely compares is getting in shape. When you first start, it sucks so, so bad. You hate every workout. You loathe going to the next. If you don’t force yourself out the door and onto the road, or into the gym, or wherever your training is to commence, you will take another day off, then another, then another, and then you find yourself back at the beginning, having to start over.

It’s only after days stacked on top of one another in a calendar full of weeks that things start to click. The work gets easier. You’re less sore every night. You can complete the tasks without breaks. All of the work you did to get there was simply the foundation for building the actual goal, and it sucked every single step of the way. But now you’re here, weeks into the routine. It has become a routine, and one that you’re starting to enjoy. And then the numbers start moving in positive directions. Weight goes down, pounds lifted or distance ran or jumping jacks jumped goes up. You can see progress, both on the charts and in the mirror. And at some point, you actually begin enjoying this masochistic practice of beating your body up every day to make it better.

Writing a novel is that, with your brain. And to get anywhere near the goal of completion, you’ve got to learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable, both physically and mentally.

Physically, you have to resist the urge to get out of the chair, walk away from the desk, and do literally anything else. You have to put down the fidget spinner or magnetic toys and type words. You have to block Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and other distractions. You have to resist the temptation to click a third and fourth and fifth link on Wikipedia or Google when you’re looking up something for your story.

Emotionally, you have to put yourself deep into the psyche of each character in each scene. If they’re hurting, you have to hurt with them. If they’re happy, you have to laugh with them. If they’re broken, you have to break with them. You have to face demons. You have to dredge up stuff from your past, or at the very least pretend what it had to be like to go through what they’re going through.

(Given that Marlowe Kana is set 100 years in our future, a lot of what’s going on is not a crisis we would face in current times. But, I can very easily correlate surviving a hurricane devastating a city to having a huge technical disaster achieve the same result. Less carbon and neon, but the same amount of suffering all the same).

The only way I can survive the process of doing all of that and make it to the end of my next novel is to get into the Flow of it. I have to love it, or I’ll never get through it. And to that end, I would compare it to any other meaningful relationship I’ve ever had in my life. It wasn’t always fun and happy times, but because I love the person, I stuck with them through thick and thin.

Novels are the same, only you have several — sometimes dozens — of people to stick with through the end. And they are going to be uncooperative at times, and downright assholes in others.

Just like some days at the gym are going to be slogs. You ate wrong, or you had a bad day at work, or you’re just plain not in the mood. But you go anyway, because that’s your job. You signed up for it. You want the achievement at the end. So you have to do the work all along, or else you simply will not get there. By default, we don’t want to do it, because we don’t enjoy the process of doing this work more than we enjoy video games, parties, hanging out with friends, or any other universally enjoyable activity. But we do enjoy the results of having done it more than any of those other things. And if you can accept that the future reward is worth the present misery, you’re well on your way to making anything you want happen.

That state of acceptance — that understanding that there will be a LOT of time put into this, and so you might as well enjoy it — that is Flow. And I can tell you honestly, once it takes hold, there’s no place else I’d rather be. It’s transcendent. It’s emotionally challenging, which is also to say I feel it. And once it takes hold, it is a drug unlike any other. It takes me over and controls me, and I can just go and go and go.

All the things I set up when I was Outside the writing begin to show up and take hold. The plot points manifest. The characters react and/or respond. The shock, the horror, the joy, the happiness, the sadness… It’s all right there, on the page, flowing through me. It’s electric.

It’s also a major, major pain in the ass to achieve. And the key to achieving it is acceptance. Accepting what it is, and what it takes to be there. Accepting what you must give up to achieve it. Hours you will not be spending at parties, or playing video games, or indulging yourself in any other form. Phone calls to trusted friends to vent out the frustrations. Research… So, so much research.

It’s work. And like all work worth doing, it is its own reward. Every single time I do it, I hate every second of getting there, but I love being there. And I never, ever regret having done it. Because at the end, I look at the body of work and know that there was no one else who could have made this exist, in this way.

That’s Flow.

[image error]Oh look, someone made a nice image with text over it to motivate us to do something hard… Wait? What? There’s literally thousands of these? Well, okay then. I guess it’s a commonly understood thing. EXCEPT IT’S NOT AND WE ARE ALL PROOF.

So, we’ve covered a lot of the emotional stuff that stops 99.9% of all efforts to write a novel. You’ve accepted that yes, this is hard, and there are challenges. You’re convinced that you’re able to take it on and get to the actual mechanics of writing the thing. I feel the same way. But I had to get through all this stuff before I could make any meaningful progress on the actual writing of my novels. So, next, we’ll start diving into the mechanics of how I approached writing Marlowe Kana — structure, plot, characters, arcs, storytelling… All that great stuff. See you in Pt. 7.

On Writing, Pt. 5: Getting Unblocked

There are many authors who will tell you writer’s block is a fabrication.

They (meaning Stephen King) will tell you that the amateur waits for inspiration, while the professional gets to work. They (meaning Todd Henry) will glibly say “I only write when I’m motivated too. I just happened to be motivated every day at 8am.” They argue on forums and bicker in writer’s groups and oh my god, shut up already.

The shit exists. I know, because I experienced it. Many, many times.

[image error]It is.

And like the subtitle suggests, it is very similar to constipation. You might be disgusted by the comparison, but it’s universal. We’ve all taken breaks from healthy diets to indulge in garbage food, and then regretted it. Pizza, or cheesy crap, or breads and beer, or other things that aren’t on the plan and block you up. We’ve all done it. We suffer the next few days. It’s aggravating, and sometimes painful. I sit there wishing, hoping, praying, and begging for stuff to come out. I need relief. I need to go. But. I. Just. Can’t.

And then… After trying and trying and trying; after discomfort and aguish and pain and humiliation and irritability… It happens. Shit begins to flow.

It’s a struggle at first, but once it gets going… The relief is palpable. It is nearly all consuming. And the trick is, you never stopped trying to go. It just wouldn’t come out, until finally it did.

So for me, writer’s block is real. But writer’s block is no excuse not to write.

I think that’s the major thing all the pros are trying to say. Writing is hard. The longer you go between writing assignments, the harder it gets. The less “inspired” you feel, the more you’d rather be doing something else. The farther away from the final word count you are, the more daunting the work is. And the only way out of it is to do the work.

[image error]You better be glad I didn’t search for any constipation gifs.

You may start and stop a hundred times, or a thousand. You may throw away a paragraph, or a chapter, or an entire manuscript. The writing doesn’t connect. It’s not up to par. It’s not your writing, as you need and want it to be. And as such, it has to go. But it’s not useless. It’s warmups in a workout. It’s the grunting and straining of trying to go when you’re constipated. It’s part of the process.

All too often, though, it is so discouraging, I just stop. I can’t face it. It hurts too much. It sucks too much.

That’s what the whole “Encouraged at 8 AM” thing is all about. As Elizabeth Gilbert explains in her HIGHLY RECOMMENDED video on creativity, the muse can take her sweet time deciding if she’s going to show up on any particular day and bless you with her divine gift of creative “genius” but if you’re not sitting there at the keyboard when she comes by… She’s gonna bail.

Showing up for your part of the job is mandatory, writer’s block or no.

Here’s a handy trick: Everyone knows the blank page is the single most intimidating thing on the planet, next to maybe Brock Lesnar. So, start somewhere. Try this:

[image error]Now if only someone could find a trick to making Brock Lesnar less scary…

Try writing “Once upon a time, someone did a thing. Something happened as a result. They changed in some way. The End.” Then just edit it with some detail. Believe it or not, it works.

But whatever you do, just write. Put words down. You can always delete them later, or better, edit them to work. But you can’t do anything with them if you don’t get them out. And if you stay in the story, pushing, eventually it will come out. When it does, you will achieve a state of flow, which I will talk about in the next part (and thankfully, I’ll be abandoning the constipation correlation, because I think we’ve had enough of that shit).

 

What is Authenticity in a Post-Authentic World?

I will warn you ahead of time: I have no conclusion for this piece.

There’s no clever summation; no wrap-up. It meanders in places, and stalls out in others. This is a bit of a brain expansion exercise for me that I’m sharing for the exercise of it.

This topic — What Is Authenticity these days? — has been on my mind a lot lately, having quit my day job to write all day (again). It has forced me to ask a lot of weird, difficult to answer questions: What does it mean anymore to be authentic in art? When is selling art, also “selling out?” And how much has what I do, and how I do it, changed (and still must yet change) in the modern era? These questions and others like them are always with me these days, deep in the back of my mind.

They came front-of-mind this morning after I read a very interesting article about the post-authentic culture. The opening sentence-made-paragraph let me know I would be reading each and every word of the entire many-thousands-of-words piece:

“Has it occurred to you that nobody talks about sellouts anymore?”

[image error]Hi.

 

(Aside: I hope you’ll read the article I linked above, because it is brilliant. As a self-proclaimed culturenaut, I think It is mandatory reading for anyone concerned with authenticity, selling out, bespoke or handmade anything, hipster culture, or why the race to the bottom of complete homogenization has beaten you no matter how unique or individual you think you are when you buy things, eat food, or otherwise exist in a post-capitalist society. So, you know… Light reading. And for more light reading, you absolutely should read about the concept of premium mediocrity, and how all of us in the middle class world are participating — not just because we have to, but because we must. And yes, I just used two synonyms back to back, saying the same thing but in italics and it was to make a point. Plus, I just updated the editor I use to type this stuff in and wanted to test out the italics keyboard shortcut.)

As a kid who spent most of his formative years in the post-80’s-reactionary-90’s, the idea of “Selling Out” is one that still sticks with me to this day. In the track “Caught, Can We Get a Witness?” one of my heroes, Chuck D, asked his partner Flavor Flav “Yo, Flav, think we’ll ever sell out?” To which Flav responds “I know if we do, we gotta get the hell out!”

For a certain generation, “Selling Out” is an unforgivable crime.

In my youth, when an indie band you loved signed to a major label, or worse — sold their song to a car commercial, you would be so disgusted you’d never ever listen to them again (see: just about everyone who ever talks about Jawbreaker, and this oral history about 1995, the year it all happened. And here’s a list at Vice’s Noisy that checks back in on the crop of late 90’s punk “sellouts” and asks if we were fair to leave them… answer, of course we weren’t, because we’re asking this in 2018 and the idea of “selling out” isn’t a thing, so how could abandoning them for a crime that no longer exists be fair?).

But here we are, in 2018, and there’s really no such thing anymore. No one cares. The idea that the internet is supposed to be free for all, totally full of free content, with people who make this stuff needing to eat and have a roof over their heads, has necessitated that for this stuff to exist, you have to either a) charge money for it, or b) let an advertiser have access to your people. Sadly, these are the only two options, because the only other option would be a universal basic income which frees us all from having to trade hours for dollars as our genius society builds robots to handle manual labor and yeah, that’s just not going to happen until after the revolution.

When was the last time you even cared about an ad on a website, provided you aren’t already blocking them? When did you hear a band doing a Jeep (*cough* X-Ambassadors) or a Nationwide Insurance jingle (like 8 different “indie” artists who are clearly major label seeds being planted in product placement songs) and thought anything of it, besides whether or not the song was catchy? When a podcast or a newsletter you like is brought to you by Squarespace or Wix, do you wince? Probably not.

Let’s say you pay for HBO Now or Netflix, and they pre-roll an advertisement for something else on their own network? That’s an ad. But we don’t really care. We’ve gotten used to it. People gotta promote their stuff, and it’s just accepted.

I think back to how Henry Rollins once described selling out. He was talking about when Iggy Pop did a song with the Teddybears, which was then sold to a car commercial. People accused Iggy of selling out, and Henry said “it’s not selling out if you sell something you already made, that was pure when you made it. You sell out when you turn yourself into a machine for the money and not the art.”

The internet has changed A LOT since I was doing this, here, for my supper. It used to be, if you charged for your work, no one paid up front, and if you ran ads on your site, you were a “sellout” of the worst kind. But here we are, and people pay for content and blindly visit sites with ads day in, day out — even those of us who started the internet back in the days where “selling out” was anethema.

There’s a part of me somewhere deep inside that is still sixteen or twenty-six yelling about how gross it’s all become… But the middle-aged, 2018-me corrects them both. “Times have changed,” I say to me. “This is the culture now. It’s amorphous and omni-present. There’s an always-on network connection in almost every home across the United States and access to one in every country on the planet, full of content, that gets more and more content by the day, the hour, the minute… somewhere, somehow, the bills gotta get paid.”

I’ve become the older, wiser person who is learning to accept things the way they are, and for what they are. And it’s fucking with me something fierce.

Besides, where even are the lines these days? Are there even any lines anymore?

We live in a world where people are hip to the fact that bills have to get paid. New York Times has a paywall, and also runs ads. So does the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and hundreds of other newspapers and magazines. HBO Go, Netflix, Hulu, Crunchyroll, Youtube Red.

And yet, if you launch an album as a new musician, or write a book as a new author, or try in any other art form to put your work out in a paid-for model, and no one knows who you are… The chances of someone paying money to take a risk on you is zero. Not close to zero, but ZERO. Period. In the days of record and book stores, you’d pick up a book you never heard of by an author you never heard of and if the back cover matter (or the cover itself) hooked you, you’d pay 5 or 7 or 12 or 18 bucks to see what they were all about. That is neither better nor worse than today, it’s just different.

It means that to get anywhere initially, you must give your stuff away and get people interested. I believe in this model. It’s how I’ve released literally everything I’ve ever written. Right now, I’m experimenting with that model some, by running a Patreon and offering exclusive material and early releases to people who pay for it up front. If you support me monthly, I feel you should get the books and stuff I wrote during that month you paid as included in your fee. Others can buy the book when it comes out.

But also, for taking a risk on me, I believe you need something that makes that risk worthwhile. It’s not enough to give you the stuff I will charge others for just because you paid up front — that up front payment entitles you to exclusive works and access. You get to see how things are made, you get them earlier than anyone else, and also you get books and stories that only YOU get to see. I think that’s fair.

I receive a salary every month from people who want to see me make writing. I traded one boss at a day job for a paycheck for many bosses at a job for less money, but with infinitely more freedom — and I know the work is going to people who appreciate it.

So, after nearly 20 years of writing online, have I just sold out because I am now making stories that are for people who paid for them? I don’t think that’s fair to say, even to myself, and yet I still can’t help but think on it. My inner 16 year old is barking at me about how I’m going against the grain of everything the internet ever stood for. Mind you, this is the same 16 year old who delights every single time he browses for entire catalogs of music by bands he loved in the 90’s, and can have them all because he paid 10 bucks a month to Spotify — and sees nothing at all wrong with that.

[image error]…But is it tho?

So, is the work that I create for my Patreon supporters inauthentic because it was paid for up front? That’s a question I cannot answer just yet. Of course, I say it isn’t. The exclusive Marlowe Kana novella that’s going with the Art of Marlowe Kana book (exclusive to Patreon members!) is part of her story. The story is authentic, as authentic as any other chapter or novel I’ve written. It’s deeply considered, written thoroughly to the best of my ability, and develops Marlowe further. But it’s for people who paid.

Is that selling out? Or just doing my job?

Like I said, I have no cohesive answer here. It’s just a bunch of thoughts on a topic I consider a core part of who I am and how I see the world; thoughts which are changing — which means by default, I am changing. And that’s never easy.

What are your thoughts?

On Writing, Pt. 4: You Know It When You Read It

Last night, I made myself cry. 

[image error]Something like this.

I was writing a chapter of Marlowe Kana Volume 4 that dug into some really deep wounds, both for my characters and for myself. As they say, you write what you know — and in the Marlowe Kana series, I’m bringing a lot of the life stuff I’ve experienced into a world I’ve created to make it human. Some of that stuff is ugly, and some of that stuff hurts.

Without spoiling anything, I can tell you that the main character, Marlowe Kana, was adopted as a child. In the United American State in 2097, non-natively born Americans aren’t allowed in the country, and as such, her adoption by her father and mother was illegal. But because he is a military hero and his wife was a famous singer before her passing, they were able to grease a few wheels and spin the media to make it happen.

The scene I wrote deals with some stuff just about every adopted kid has had to deal with. Abandonment, being treated like a piece of property instead of like a human being, and so on. It touched a personal nerve with me, as my childhood had its fair share of those feelings. And dealing with them hurts each time I do, whether it be in my head or in my writing.

But it wasn’t the hurt that made me cry. It was the way it worked in the story. It made me feel for my character — not because I wrote her, and not because her pain is my pain. But I could relate. In reading it back, I could see and feel clearly what she was experiencing. It clicked. And it made me tear up.

[image error]Even Darryl cries.

So far in this series, I’ve only really discussed the feeling of writing. How it feels to start. How it feels to start over. That moment things come together. I haven’t yet gotten into the mechanics of things — how I structure plot, how I form a character arc, how I use a character’s background in the current setting, how I world-build… That will come. I will be writing more about how these things work for me.

But to start the series, I feel like discussing the hardest part — the feelings you face when trying to write — is the most important. Anyone can talk about the mechanics of anything. Go into any gym and you’ll find no shortage of people who can explain how to bench press, or squat, or run on the treadmill. But you’ll be hard-pressed to find people who are open to talk about the days they don’t feel like coming in, or the days they have a fight with their significant other and try to work out and just can’t, or recovering from injury, or any of the other very natural, VERY likely to happen, things that will absolutely affect your time in the gym.

As such, I feel that for most writers, especially starting out, the hardest things in the world to grasp have nothing at all to do with the mechanics. Sure, they are responsible for a lot, if not most, of the confusion and inertia and “I can’t do this!” stuff. But those feelings — the confusion, the inertia, and the feeling that you can’t do this — are the hardest parts to overcome, because they never, ever go away. Not fully. And not ever. I’ve been writing for going on 18 years, and despite moving to a completely new format (fiction, specifically science fiction) that is SO MUCH HARDER to get right than my previous writing, the common threads throughout all 18 of these years are the feelings. They’re what sabotage you in the beginning. And once you get past them, they’re what drive you to finish this work you thought you couldn’t do.

And the hardest thing in the world to do — at least for me — is to make that connection with a person’s feelings. Finding that painful, or happy, or peaceful, or otherwise deep core emotional experience and connecting to it with words on a page… It’s a challenge, to say the very least. It’s hard to do even if you discount how it makes you feel while doing it. You have to craft the words in such a way that they don’t sound like “HEY, so guess what, I’m about to talk about really ugly stuff, you ready? I hope you are, here goes.”

You just have to get in there and root around and make it work. That’s what happened last night. I began working through it, wrote it out, connected to it deeply, and then just let it go.

Hemmingway said it best: “Write hard and clear about what hurts.”

If it were easy, we’d all write like Hemmingway. But Hemmingway is Hemmingway because he did the work it took to get deep in there, find the emotion he wanted to connect to, dissected it, translated it, and then had either the bravery or the stupidity to put it on the page.

[image error]Poor Toby… he knows powerful writing when he sees it. Or when his Aunt May dies.

I’m no Hemmingway, that much is for sure. But I feel very good about the work I did last night. It hurt. I cried. But today, I feel as good about it as I have any other piece of writing I’m proud of. Will it connect with you? I have no idea. I do know that a number of people have written me the past year to let me know portions of Marlowe Kana have rang true with them — the connection between Marlowe and her sister Jen, the anger and pain Marlowe felt with her ex, the rage of being blamed for something she did not do, the confusion of the people around her as they watched her go through all of this… These are all things that are unique to all of us, in their own ways, in our own lives. Surely, they’re not universal. But for those who have experienced that stuff, these portions of the story connect with those emotions deep inside them.

Forget sales figures or web traffic. Did I connect with people? Did they get something from the writing that had nothing to do with the plot, and everything to do with how they feel about the character? Did the story connect with them? That’s the stuff I call a win.

As for how I achieve that… That can only be dissected after it’s done, because I cannot tell you how I get there while I’m getting there. I can only tell you how I got there after I’ve arrived. And that stuff’s coming.

For now, the takeaway: if you write something that makes you laugh out loud when you read it back, or tear up, or cringe (not because of the quality of the writing, but because what’s going on in the story genuinely makes you feel like cringing), or shiver in fear… You’ve done something there. That’s the stuff you want to hold on to.

(With one exception: Unless you’re writing recipes on the internet. Then that stuff is annoying. I don’t care about your childhood summers at your aunt’s island villa and the way the sun danced on the golden waves of pudding she made, just tell me how to make the damn dessert, please!)

[image error]Biographical long-form essays on making pudding make me cry for entirely different reasons.

The Beautiful Struggle Of The 90 Day Challenge

I lack discipline.

[image error]True.

By my very nature, I am a lazy, lazy man. I have a part of myself — let’s call him Lazy Joe — who likes to overindulge in life’s pleasures. If that guy had his way, I’d smoke weed, eat cookies, play video games, and generally never get out of my recliner again.

Thankfully, there’s another part of me that can’t stand that kind of decadence and he strives to push things forward in all possible cases. I’ll call him Better Joe. This guy likes making things. He likes working out. He likes pushing projects along as far as they can go, and when he hits a wall, he grabs a hammer and begins taking the wall apart to push projects along further. He’s the guy who wrote three books in a year while working a full-time job and rehabbing a house. He’s the guy who convinced me to quit my day job and focus on writing full-time. He’s truly a force to be reckoned with.

The problem is, Better Joe is not better than Lazy Joe by default. In fact, the longer it’s been since he’s been in charge, the more he resembles puny Steve Rogers, full of heart and courage but lacking in the physical power it takes to push the lumpy, lazy, ever-growing Lazy Joe out of the damn way.

Lazy Joe is a tough fucker to move. It’s not because he’s the better fighter. Hell, he doesn’t even bother fighting back. He knows exactly how hard it is to move dead weight, and he weighs a LOT (and more with every day that Better Joe doesn’t make me work out and eat right). Lazy Joe wins by default, because he doesn’t have to work to win. He wins every time Better Joe takes a break, phones it in, or stops paying strict attention for longer than a day. And as hard as it is to dethrone Lazy Joe, it’s worse when his friends are hanging around. He’s best buds with self-doubt, depression, and sadness, and he calls those guys over for scotch and blunts all the damn time.

The odds are stacked against Better Joe. Lazy Joe can fuck around, screw up, and miss any shot he takes at beating Better Joe. Better Joe can’t miss even once.

[image error]Actual footage of my days when Lazy Joe is in charge

Over the years, I’ve come up with a number of ways to help Better Joe get a leg up and take the the controls from Lazy Joe. By far, the most useful, productive, and effective tool in my arsenal is the 90 Day Challenge.

Simply put, it’s a 90 day span where I work on a goal every single day, without fail. No breaks. No off days. Every single day, progress must be made, or the 90 day counter starts over.

In a previous post, I shared some of what my former 90 Day Challenge partners and I have done — Joseph Rhodes (AKA Joey The Mad Scientist) released an original, made-from-scratch musical track a day for 90 days (some of these ended up being the groundwork for the Marlowe Kana Volume 1 Soundtrack). My friend Justin McElderry (AKA IF//ELSE) recorded a new beat every day for 90 days. Jason Covert drew a sketch a day for 90 days, and also recorded new guitar tracks every day for 90 days (some of which also went into the MK V1 soundtrack). And each of the three Marlowe Kana volumes published last year were the result of 90 day challenges.

[image error]…Man, now I want a hot dog.

90 Day Challenges can be literally anything:

Eat right for 90 days straight
Work out for 90 days (you need to incorporate rest days, but they’re part of the program so they count)
Write for 90 days
Publish a new short story every day for 90 days
Write a chapter in a novel every day for 90 days
Do 10 push-ups every day for 90 days
Learn something new about car maintenance, krav maga, cross-stitch, or whatever the hell else you want for 90 days

See? Literally anything. The only rule is that you have to make demonstrable progress every single day. If your goal is, say, write a chapter in a novel every day for 90 days, that means writing a complete chapter. It’s not done until the final punctuation mark on the final sentence. If you say you’ll practice guitar for one hour every day for 90 days, that means 60 full minutes of guitar practice — not 59 minutes and 59 seconds. So make sure your daily goal is attainable.

On the flip side, it does no good whatsoever to “challenge” yourself to something so easy you aren’t pushed to make it happen. “Put on socks every day for 90 days” is certainly a goal, yes. But does it push anything forward? Does it help you achieve a goal? If so, then I say go for it, but some part of me thinks that’s probably some bullshit.

In the course of your 90 Day Challenge, you will want to quit. That’s the point of making it 90 days. Anyone can do almost anything for 30 days straight. 60 days… that’s an effort. But 90 straight full days of work? That’s a challenge. And it is hard — but it is entirely doable.

[image error]Also true.

Have you ever ever started a new job and accidentally driven to the old one? You’re lost in the tunes on the radio, or deep in thought, or sleepy and forgot your coffee, and your body drives you to the new job without even thinking about it. But did you even stop to think about how to crank the car, or apply the gas or brakes, or when to turn on a turn signal? Did you have to recall all the rules of the road or obsess over how to make the car turn left or right?

By the time you get to that point, driving becomes muscle memory, and your brain is more focused on building the new habit. The mechanics and technical aspects are engrained. The same goes with the 90 Day Challenge.

Here’s the general flow of things:

Spirits stay high and excitement drives you for the first, oh, five to seven days.

Sometime around day ten, you start asking yourself if you can really do it.

By day 30, you’ll feel like you’ve done something pretty awesome, and why do I have to keep going? I’ve already proven my point.

By day 45, you’ll wonder how the hell you made it this far, only to look at the calendar and realize you have that far to go yet still. You’ll probably sigh and grit your teeth and get to work.

By day 60, magic starts happening. True magic. Stuff you never in a million years thought could come out of you starts to, either artistically or physically (or both). The discipline has taken hold, and the habit has been formed, and now you’re completely over the mechanics of simply doing the movements involved in making stuff or working out or eating right and your brain is free to expand and explore the space.

By day 90, you’ve proven quite a few things:

There’s stuff in you you had no idea was there.
You are capable of doing far, far more than you realized.
You are better — measurably better — than you were 90 days ago.
You are unstoppable with enough momentum.

I’ve been in a new 90 Day Challenge for a little while now. Three of them, in fact. And they are going pretty well. At Day 7, my body is sore (in a great way), my diet has improved, and Volume 4 is making huge headway. I’ll post again at days 30, 60, and 90 to report in and hold myself accountable.

Lazy Joe hates the 90 Day Challenge. It has been so successful in my life that, at this point, if I decide to do one, he doesn’t even bother signing and complaining. He gets up and leaves on his own. It’s an eviction notice to the worst part of my character. I will let him come back once the rent is paid and I don’t have to worry that he’ll break the place… But for now, work has to get done and he’s not helping, so he gots to go.

I hope that if you try one for yourself, you’ll let me know how it’s going and keep me posted. Accountability is a HUGE leg up — if you have a friend (or a few) who you can pair up with and keep each other abreast of how your 90 Day Challenges are going, it’ll help.

[image error]Gotta end on a Sorkin.