Christopher C. Starr's Blog, page 23

Ready Or Not…it's NaNoWriMo!

I wasn't ready. I'm never ready.

November is National Novel Writing Month and somewhere in the midst of choosing costumes for kids, helping my wife turn a garage into a haunted house for a 7-year-old's birthday party, and yet another round of client-based travel, I realized that it was high time for me to come up with another concept.

I was dreading the time though, hating the idea of writing a new book: I had finally gotten all versions of my novel The Road to Hell complete and available (you can buy them here or here). I was riding high on the idea that I could sit back and work on marketing my new masterpiece but here I was, faced with another November and already 5 days behind. I was seriously considering bowing out this year until I was reminded of a conversation I'd had with my son a few months ago.

I love movies and one of my great escapes is going to them by myself. Movie theatres, like airplanes, are among the few places in the country you can retreat to and be untouchable. No calls, no texts or emails—hey, the sign on the screen says for me to turn off the phone. You can escape your life and, for 2 hours, watch someone else's adventure. On a night where I needed one of those escapes, I went to see the latest Planet of the Apes movie and convinced my 12 year old son he should go too. But it was 10pm and he's scared of the dark. Still. (Somewhere along the way, I'd made the comment "the freaks come out at night" and The Boy took it to heart.)

He was scared that we'd go to this movie and something horrible was going to happen. Now I have a self-diagnosed Superman complex—I always believe that I can do anything and will be all right. This kid does not. Anyways, we make it through the movie unscathed and he realizes that sometimes taking a chance is worth it. Happy ending, right? That's what I thought and I was riding that parental high. On the way home, he's asking me all these questions about movies he wants to see but is wondering if he will get in trouble if he watches them. Basically asking me permission. Now, personally, I'm a fan of asking for forgiveness, not permission. Screw permission—asking for permission is restrictive to me; forgiveness is all about acceptance: I did it, what are you gonna do about it? And I'm not talking Debbie Does Dallas, this is about stuff like Hot Tub Time Machine and Scarface—stuff you don't necessarily want your 12 year old watching but 12 year olds want to watch. So I finally pull over and tell the kid, "You know, some of the best experiences of my life have been because of two words: fuck it. Stop asking for permission for little stuff. You wanna watch the movie, just watch the movie. Just be big enough to deal with the consequences."

The Boy: "But Mom is gonna be mad!"

Me: "You're watching movies, dude, not doing crack—I think you'll be alright. Live your life. You only get one."

Which brings me back to NaNoWriMo. Now some of you might be thinking: why in the world would I try to write a novel? Much less in 30 days? The answer is, Why not? It's part of living, part of joining that rare percentage of people who break up their mundane, routine lives with a little bit of "Fuck It." The 30 days are going to pass anyway. What if you had something impressive to show for it? 50,000 incredible (or horrible) words on a page, the first draft of a novel. Your novel. Something you can cross off your bucket list.

You might also be saying, "Chris, you clown, it's November 5. At a rate of 1667 words a day, I'd have to write 10,000 words just to be on goal by tomorrow." Fair point. You could write 2500 words a day (that's 2 ½ pages) over the next week and you'd be on track. My daughter is writing that much and she's in the 4th grade. You write more in emails everyday. Or you can do what I did: I cheated. A little. There is always a story percolating in my head (usually there are a few of them, each one clamoring for my attention). Chances are, you have one swimming in there too, whispering in your ear. What NaNoWriMo offers me, and you, is a reason to pluck that bad boy out of my noggin and give it a life.

November 30 is going to come because, as Ben Stein said in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, "Time waits for no man." Two little words are all that stand in your way.

Ballstober!

My wife loves horror movies.  LOVES THEM!  I do not.  I'm not talking about the gory Saw, Hostel, Human Centipede fare.  Oh no, she likes the creepy, let-me-haunt-you, possess-you stuff. The crap that freaks me out. Her favorite is Halloween or anything Wes Craven has done. It's her father's fault, as a single dad it was his way to bond with her. She grew up with Freddy, Jason and Pinhead. Not my best friends at all.

In an earlier post, I talked about how the movie Alien is the reason I'm a writer today.  The truth is, that movie scared the cowboy shit outta me when I was six years old.  Fast forward two years and I remember watching that creepy doll rocking and the house telling people to Get Out in the Amityille Horror.  My sister had one of those dolls. I've been frightened of basements ever since.  I can remember checking my scalp for the 666 from The Omen (I will not get on lake ice to this day because of the ice hockey scene in Damien: Omen II), praying I didn't get possessed like Regan in The Exorcist, becoming too frightened to sleep after A Nightmare on Elm Street.

But it's October.  And this year it's Ballstober!

I'm changing the rules this year.  I'm growing a pair this year and am watching every single bone-chilling, spine-tingling, nightmare-inducing second of whatever my wife wants to see.  Over the last 18 days, I've had Michael Myers stab me to death, have run for my life from Jason Vorhees, have tried to figure out what was happening with Pinhead's complexion—you get it.  Sleepless nights or not, the goal was the find the thrill in horror movies, to embrace the fear, the requisite terror and wallow in those emotions.

I wrote a novel about the war in Heaven and Lucifer's fall from grace, all from his point of view (you can find it here).  For a guy who's no fan of horror movies, that's a pretty ballsy move, right?  In all the movies, all the stories, I'd ever read about the devil, he was always characterized as having the worst of intentions, of being the worst entity we could imagine.  I had all kinds of fears going into it:  that it wouldn't be good enough, that I'd fail to capture the essence of the story, that I'd never get it done.  What I decided to focus on, though, was Lucifer's ability to know what others were afraid of and to capitalize on that.  That idea, identifying someone's fears and playing to them, made him far more evil and more compelling.  At least to me.

Facing our fears is, at times, both necessary and healthy.  We have to address those things that frighten us, get in touch with those visceral emotions just to become well-adjusted, productive human beings.  As writers, our fears enable us to craft those stories that touch people or antagonists that instill both fear and respect.  For me, Lucifer did both.  He forced me to address my own fears (that something supernatural would worm it's way into my life) and was devilishly fun to write in the process.

I issue this challenge to writers and readers alike: grow a pair.  Find the thing that terrifies you, that haunts the corners of your nightmares, and embrace it, even for a moment.  I'm not saying play in traffic if you're agoraphobic.  I say open a window, step on the porch.  If you're scared of spiders, watch Arachnophobia or Kingdom of Spiders.  It's Ballstober!  Do something daring!  You'll be better off. Promise…

Eaten by the Dragon

I lost my battle with the Day Job Dragon.  Lost badly.

For the last 3 weeks I have been embroiled in a life-or-death war with clients and commitments, added value value adds, phone calls and emails, meetings and travel. And laundry!  Oh so much laundry!  Entire mounds of it, overflowing hampers and baskets, pooling in closets like a multi-colored blob threatening to consume us all.

Somewhere along the way, somewhere in this fight, I was supposed to be staving off the Dragon long enough to dash words on the page, or complete my edits, or commit to entering into discussions on Twitter.  I wasn't trying to vanquish the Dragon or even obliterate the blob (sorry for the monster references—it is October after all).  I was trying to carve out a tiny bubble, a sanctuary, in the maelstrom that is my real world responsibilities just so I could write.  Prepare for NaNoWriMo.  Make my Kindle and Nook editions real.  Plan for Book Two in my Heaven Falls series.

But I lost.

The bubble was burst.  Those savory morsels of literary gold that hung on the tips of my fingers eventually bled into the wind, lost.  The thieves of time had taken all my spares.  I lost.

Kinda.

See, while I was pushing against the Dragon, futilely pressing it back, I was feeding it.  Nourishing it.  Riding it.  In real world terms, I was advancing my career, trying to close one chapter of my professional life and open another.  I was locked in a real battle with the day Job Dragon from consuming what really mattered:  my home life.  Everything was out of balance and I wasn't giving myself to the living breathing human beings that dominate my existence.  So while my words lost and my characters remained in the undeveloped stasis of my imagination, my parenting skills took the precedence.  My wife launched a company and my support for her dwarfed my satisfaction at words on the page.  Other things began to matter.

Recently, my mother began reading my book.  My novel, The Road to Hell is Lucifer's account of the war in Heaven and his own fall from grace.  One of the main characters is the archangel Raphael.  Just as my mom was reading first few chapters, we had the following text conversation (yes, I could have called but she likes texting):

       Mom: Bet you didn't remember that Raphael was your imaginary friend when you were little…I remember cause you used to make me set a place for him at the dinner table (smiles)

       Me: Are u serious?  Raphael was my imaginary friend?  You're playing with me right?

[You have to understand, I've been woken up by Raphael in the middle of the night, have seen him standing next to my bed or walking on my walls.  I thought I was having visions.  Or needed to be committed.]

       Mom:  Indeed he was.  You used to be really serious about him…don't know if your dad remembers but Raphael lived with us for about five or six years….Anyway, when I opened the book, it was like saying hello to him again with a smile.

I had that conversation when I was dog tired in a hotel room in Houston (I live in Seattle), still awake trying to figure out something for a client.  I learned something in that exchange, aside from being freaked out that my imaginary friend ended being a major character in my novel:  this stuff never goes anywhere.  It's always there and it'll never leave.  As writers, we hear that we MUST write each and every day to get into the habit of writing and making the juices flow, yadda yadda yadda, right?  And it's great advice from people whose day job is to write but it's not always helpful for those of us who have lives away from the page.

But it never leaves.  Sure, like any skill, it improves with practice and focus and time and effort.  But raw talent is raw talent.  That God-given capability that is forged in the womb and walks with us throughout all our days—that never leaves.  It doesn't go anywhere.  It waits, paces, yawns, stretches, and resolves to be there when you need it.

I don't know if Raphael was a childhood figment designed to get me through a tough time or the face I put on my writing ability.  I'm not sure if it matters.  What I do know is he's been there longer than I remember and he'll be there long after I forget.  So while I charge off to another round against the Dragon or try my damnedest to escape the laundry quagmire, he'll be there.  Waiting.  With that familiar smile on his face, ready for me.  And when the time is right, we'll meet again.

Know Your Limits? Pssshh…

Somebody once told me "Know your limits." I think that's bad advice: as soon as you start believing in limits, you start believing in what you cannot do, in what you cannot achieve. Limits are for suckers. Anything is possible.

This is not a 9/11 post.

Well, not exactly.

I remember where I was when it happened.  I remember getting off the train in downtown Cleveland and jumping a bus to work, and having my receptionist ask me if I'd heard someone flew a plane into the World Trade Center.  I remember responding "On purpose?"  I remember my entire office crowded around a tiny 13-inch television set with bad reception watching the second plane hit.  I remember going home.  I remember shock.  I remember seeing a weary, shell-shocked Peter Jennings on TV for 5 days, his tie loosened. sleeves rolled up.  I remember everything being different after that.

I remember it so well that I don't need a play-by-play, blow-by-blow, visceral reminder on every media outlet available.  I can't turn on my radio without hearing "day of" coverage.  My television is flooded with specials and interviews and memorials—and it's all rushing back.  Like picking at a scab that's finally starting to heal.  This is not to minimize it at all.  How can I?  It is the single most potent, most powerful event my 38 years have ever witnessed.  It was seismic.  The world changed.  We changed.  I changed.

About 3 weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go to Washington DC on business.   My meetings finished a day early and I decided to stay and take in the sights.  See the things I'd never seen in my nation's capital.  I saw the White House and Capitol Building, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and the Monuments: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, the wars.

It was one thing to see the documents that forged a nation, to see the actual ideas that framed the country we live in.  The monuments, those testaments to the cost of those ideas—these moved me to tears.  I read Lincoln's words from the Gettysburg Address, the site of the bloodiest battle of the Civil war, telling me that those deaths should not be in vain but should remind us "government of the people, by the people, for the people should never perish from the earth."  I stood in Martin Luther King Jr.'s place on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial where he demanded America fulfill its promises.  I wept at the wall of the Vietnam Memorial.  I read South Korea's words honoring our "sons and daughters who answered the call to defend a country they never knew and a people they never met."  And I thought, "This is us.  This is who we are.  This is what it means to be an American."

My daughter is a product of September 11, 2001.  Literally. When she was 3 or 4, Kayla watched me cut something with a pretty big knife and asked me if she could use the knife.  I quickly, and harshly, told her no, that she would cut herself, and turned my back to do something else.  Being as headstrong as her mother, she grabbed the knife anyway and, sure enough, cut herself pretty good.  On her face.  She still has the scar to this day.  And after she was mended up and the tears wiped away, she still wanted to use the knife.  I learned two things about Kayla that day:  that it was better for me to teach her the right way to do something than just tell her no (she'll do it anyway and damn near kill herself) and that she is fearless.  Like a honey badger.  It's simply who she is.

There is an incredible amount of vitriol in our discourse these days.  There is venom in our political system, angst in our economy, tumult on Wall Street, anxiety on Main Street.  It is easy to be pulled into one partisan faction or another, to turn a simple difference of opinion into discord and destructive commentary.  We're better than who we have become.  We're more than who the media would have you believe or who our political parties portray.  We're more than this.

And, like I said, this isn't a 9/11 post. It's a 9/12 post.

It is really about who we became afterwards.  After shock became realization, after conspiracy and conjecture turned into fact, we became us.  They did this to us.  Us!  We were attacked, we were victimized.  We pulled together and mourned together and found revenge and resolve together.  The idle differences that separate us—race, religion, political affiliation—these mundane trappings disintegrated.  The color of someone's skin was irrelevant.  Their partisan beliefs became immaterial.  Our ideals reigned supreme.  Our allegiance to this nation and what it stood for, what it was founded upon was the only valid test.  I could look at my neighbor, look at my co-worker, sit next to someone on the train and share a collective sense of loss and identity.  We were the same, this neighbor, this co-worker, this commuter, and I—we were We and Us and we were Americans.  We were in it together.

Let's get back to that, to those people.  It's simply who we are.

I can do anything…sometimes

I admittedly have a Superman complex:  I think I can do anything.  Anything.  Climb Mount Everest?  Just give me a pickaxe, a rope and a yak.  Swim with the sharks? Let me grab my trunks.  Conquer world hunger? I need a loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter…you get it.  I often tell my wife I cannot fly and I cannot read minds; everything else is on the table.

But I have limits.  I'm learning that much.  I can't do it all and juggling the multiple personae I have often gets the best of me.  I am a husband, a father, someone's employee, a business owner, a writer.  And just me.  Sometimes I find my rhythm and everything is clicking along like clockwork, making stride after stride; sometimes it's like Spiderman 2 and I'm getting my ass kicked every time I turn around.  In the course of one week, I've learned I can be a better employee, that I need to spend more time with my wife, that I yell at my daughter too much, that I really should figure how to create epubs, and that my ankle still hurts too much to walk my dog.  But I do try; I do set a bar for myself in all aspects of my life that I strive to reach.  And more often than not, my efforts are largely successful.  Sometimes, though, I fall.  I fail.  Sometimes I realize I just a man.

There are things you know about yourself long before someone decides to bring it to your attention.  I'm a procrastinator.  I've known it for a long time.  I just never got around to telling anybody.  But I'm also a big-hearted sap who tries to save the world—at least for those around me—but I take on far too much and the best-laid plans of mice and this man often go awry.  I don't have the cape and the shiny red boots.

In Superman Returns, Lois and Supes take a flight and he takes her incredibly high, like to the top of the world and he asks her, "What do you hear?" She tells him "Nothing."  Superman says, "I hear everything.  You wrote that the world doesn't need a savior, but everyday I hear people crying for one."  This was after he'd left for 7 years to go find any remnants of his home world.  The key part here is he left.  The needs of the world didn't stop; his responsibilities never diminished.  But he had to take care of himself, to recharge his own batteries so he could be who he needed to be for everyone else.  Even Superman couldn't do it all.  Even Superman needed a break.

I think I've come to understand Superman a little bit better.  Some of it has to do with the public vs. private personas I have—the person I can be behind these words, the person I have to be on my Day Job, the person I am when no one is looking.  The superhero vs. the secret identity.  In the comics they say the secret identity is necessary because the hero's enemies will use their loved ones as pawns in their schemes.  I think it's because the hero needs a safe place to be herself.

We are torn as writers to do and be these multiple people, for the sake of craft and for the sake of the sanity that comes when we finally succumb to the voices in our heads.  We have to do it.  I have to do it.  For me, putting words on a page or screen is as natural and as necessary as breathing.  I can't not do it.  Any more than Superman can't not fly.  Can't not fight for truth, justice and the American way.  Juggling these multiple identities is a struggle for me:  Christopher Starr the author has to be separate from Christopher Starr the husband and father.  But they are both necessary and really are two sides of the same coin.  Like Clark Kent and Superman.  Bruce Wayne and Batman.

And as I try to figure out who to be for whom, I still hear everything.

I hear it all, see it all, know it's coming long before it does, long before a week like this past one rears it's ugly head.  I know it because I know me.  I know the man I am.  And I know that I will wake up tomorrow, having taken my lumps from the past seven days, I will rise and begin to put the shattered pieces of my ego back together and I will try again.  I will take my daughter to breakfast and make my wife a priority and hobble around the block with my dog and spend part of my Labor Day weekend trying to make up for lost time professionally.  I will try to wear the cape again.

I can't not do it.