A.J. Race's Blog, page 11

What Really Makes You Happy?

A happy writer sounds a bit like an oxymoron. The two words are sort of incongruous or at least… this is the way it often seems, but writers like everybody else have many things that make them happy.

As of late the list of what makes me happy seems to be dwindling or at least my ability to do the things that makes me happy. While writing is always top of my list, being able to hang out with friends or go shopping are two things that never fail to make me happy. But being that the friends I have who aren’t in college are working, it’s difficult to find time to hang out with them.

The happiness that is found in hanging out with friends and shopping is fleeting. It’s moments of joy yes, like the moment you open a new laptop and set everything up for the first time. Or the time you do the same with your phone. The anticipation of such things last far longer than the joy of when you actually get them. I once read something that suggested it was better to want something and never give it to yourself so that you could savor the anticipation and maybe that’s partly true.

I also know that there’s nothing quite like literature to soothe the soul. Falling away in a good book whether you’re writing it or reading it is unlike anything else I can think of.

Out of curiosity I would like to know… what makes you happy? (Beyond the obvious of writing?) Is there any sort of guilty pleasure that really never fails to make you smile?

Non-Creative Privilege

All over the internet there are blogs that discuss the topic of privilege, the idea being that while most people don’t think about it or even realize it, the simple fact that they are white/male/heterosexual/cisgender (meaning not trans) means that they often are treated better than the people who are not white/male/heterosexual/cisgender, whether they realize it or not and like most things on the internet it seems to cause quite a stir, generally among people that have the aforementioned privilege but have convinced themselves that as long as their not actively assholes then obviously you can’t possibly be talking about them. But that’s another story entirely. It’s worth noting there are a lot of other privileges and that is essentially what I decided I’d like to write about today. The privilege of non-creatives, or people who work in ‘normal’ jobs.

The very fact that I even have to use the word ‘normal’ to describe individuals who work a 9 to 5 at an office or even in retail or food services is itself part of this privilege. Because no one questions the validity of their work. Nobody debates the importance of doctors or lawyers or even school teachers, (except for the G.O.P. they seem to debate school teachers importance but that too is a whole other blogpost).

There aren’t people constantly asking you (particularly within your own family) so when are you going to get a real job? Even though you’ve been writing for the last ten years and generally speaking there aren’t tens of thousands of people trying to tell you that, you can’t do it.

There’s also very rarely a time when someone says, I wish I could cut a patient open like that but I just don’t have the time/patience/energy/talent.

Nobody tries to devalue what you do constantly.

Nobody says the words: (insert job title here) is dead. Nobody operates/teaches/constructs (etc) anymore.

People probably don’t assume that you’re lazy or stupid or living with your parents.

And though you may not be aware of it, the mere fact that nobody is questioning the validity of your work because it’s ‘an actual job’ means that you are benefitting from a non-creative privilege. Think about how it would feel for someone to question what you do the next time you consider asking an author/artist, “When are they going to get a real job?”

On Breaks, Change, & What Happens Next

While I may have been a little sidetracked in the whole blogging department I’ve actually managed to get quite a bit done in the writing department, I’m finally at 20k words which is really exciting to me. So why have I been gone so long?

The answer is sort of multifaceted. On the one hand, I’ve been going through a bit of a mental breakdown because I’m about to turn 22, I’m about to graduate from college and so in short order I will have to get a real job that goes beyond just my writing. I also have a great deal of personal changes that I’m going through right now in addition to feeling old and way too young all at the same time. Add to this the fact that I haven’t really been sure what to write about, because really while I could have spent this entire week going through my insomnia induced depression, I really just wanted to curl up into a ball and sob. (Instead I watched funny things on Netflix to help whenever I could, and did a bit of writing) and what it all boils down too is… it’s been a long few weeks and I’d like to start by apologizing for my absence. I’ve wondered, rather privately whether or not it might be time to start a different adventure. I love blogging and it will always be one of my favorite ways to share my thoughts with the world, and vent my frustrations I feel like I really want to be doing something different. I’m not entirely sure what that is yet, podcasting has been difficult at best to keep up and has been on hold while I work on writing and to be honest the whole video blog or vlog as it’s known, hasn’t really ever felt right either. I’m definitely not leaving just yet… but at some point I would like to try my hand at something new. Whatever form that might take, I do hope you’ll all stay with me.

For now, the Racewood Post is going to be probably off and on. I can’t really guarantee daily posts, but hopefully I won’t disappear on you again for weeks.

The Long Haul 13k

It’s been roughly two weeks since I first began my attempt at writing two stories at once, and as expected I haven’t so much written both of my stories as one has sort of temporarily fallen by the wayside while the other one has actually been an interesting journey. At some point I will get back to the other story, perhaps if I hit a writers block on this one, or hopefully sooner.

In the interim however, I actually feel like I’ve accomplished quite a bit on this current story, in two weeks I’ve managed to write two chapters which doesn’t seem like a lot but as it amounts to almost 13,000 words I would say it’s actually a pretty great deal. Thus far these are the longest chapters I’ve ever written (which considering the genre 5,000k words isn’t overly a lot really) but I’m incredibly happy and excited. I won’t say too much about the story save for it’s technically not new new as I have written it before, but a lot has changed in this rewrite so we’ll see how that pans out.

I expect by the end of chapter three I’ll have roughly fifteen thousand words on this book. Maybe I’ll stop at like 25k (depending on where I am) and go back to my other story. I still haven’t quite decided yet. Trying to figure out how to balance two books at once has become an interesting challenge and thus far I think by definition I haven’t really succeeded.

What about you? What’s everyone working on? Have you ever tried to write two stories at once? How did that go for you?

Time Management and the Writer

I recently purchased a brand new 2013-2014 day planner. Mostly for school but I think I can safely say it might be a good idea to keep it for blogging too. Previously (before it was the Racewood Post) I could always manage to do a blog a day. I had worked hard to ensure that, but as of late I’ve been slipping, mostly because school has taken over most of my life (I confess being in my last 2/3 quarters has gotten a bit stressful) that and the fact that I’ve actually been doing a bit of writing lately in spite of a rather depressing slump earlier, it’s all culminated in my blog falling by the wayside along with my Twitter.

For the record this is not really my first day planner, in fact I have this weird obsession with loving day planners but almost never getting around to actually using them. Given however the fact that I would like to maintain my status as a daily blog, and I’d like even more to continue to write and do other things I’m going to have to start using it more and figure out a better schedule than I currently have. Ideas also seem to often be a difficult factor so if anyone would like to pitch something in the way of blog post ideas, feel free to do so. Hell I’d even post a short story if you’d like to submit one. In the meantime I should probably get back to writing, and (at some point) figure out how I want to do my newest incarnation of my post graphics. I haven’t done them because I got sick of the old but I haven’t quite assessed how I want to change it so… for now it’s blank. And the post almost feels lonely, don’t you think?

New Favorite Quotes

This week in my typography class we were challenged to create a graphical poster of a quote using unconventional methods as type, like this and this. The first half of the project was to procure a quote that I really liked. A quick google search led me to BrainyQuote, one of my favorite websites to find good quotes and naturally to my favorite author, J.K.Rowling.

Ultimately I ended up using the quote, “What other people think of me is none of my business,”–RuPaul, but I did find quite a few great new quotes by J.K.Rowling, which I decided to share with you here.

background image via: www.grungetextures.com

For anyone who has seen her plot outline for Order of the Phoenix which was showcased here sometime ago, the phrase ‘basic plot outline’ may seem like a bit of an understatement, but part of the reason I so love this quote is because it solidifies the idea that at the end of the day she’s just like the rest of us and she agrees it’s fun to leave somethings to be surprised about.

A lot of writing books seem to suggest that you need to keep a journal at all times, but I’ve never really understood this insistence, if I wanted to write about me, I’d write about me, I write fiction. Now, I do recommend having either a piece of paper or something to write with or on handy at all times day or night.

background photo courtesy of Mike Chaput via Flickr.

This is by far my new favorite quote from J.K.Rowling. It’s always been my firm belief that if you’re not pissing someone off with your writing, you’re not doing a good job, and I think that a lot of the furor that surrounded Harry Potter for years was always ridiculous nonsense. I absolutely adore the idea that J.K.Rowling was just a little bit amused by all of it.

Hopefully it won’t be as long before I post my next quotes graphics. I have a large backlog of quotes on my computer, so at some point I’d like to create graphics for them. Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Hero vs. the AntiHero

In recent months I’ve begun to see a lot more articles talking about the antihero (which initially I confess I thought was meant to mean the villain). I had never really considered the concept of the antihero, there were protagonists and antagonists, but what did you call that middle ground? That character who wasn’t exactly always good, but maybe wasn’t really the villain?

As soon as I read the term anti-hero and got a proper definition for the word I realized that almost all of the characters I had written were antiheroes. If being the ‘hero’ meant you always did the right thing to reach the goal you wished to accomplish I had a sneaking suspicion that the only real hero might have been the ones dreamed up by Disney. While Harry Potter may have seemed like a selfless hero throughout the series, a lot of the ways he went about doing what he needed to do, didn’t exactly follow the letter of the law. Breaking into the Ministry and Gringotts for example. Does that classify him as antihero? Or is there a certain line at which as long as most of what they do is for the greater good, a few broken laws here doesn’t really count.

More to the point… at what point can the antihero be considered a villain?

In the last book in the Secrets of Witches trilogy, Elizabeth and Margaret’s mother is both the antihero and the villain. Initially, it would appear that she has the best of intentions with regards to her daughters, but in the end it suddenly becomes clear that perhaps she’s more evil than one might have initially thought.

I like to think that what separates our antiheroes from our villains is that while the antihero may not exactly follow the letter of the law to accomplish their ends, they do so with the best of intentions, the villains however, have no good intentions.

In my experience, the more interesting characters, as noted by this PubCrawl article on the subject, are the ones that seem to toe the line between villain and antihero, all the while leading you to wonder where they will fall.

The Writing Process

A lot of non-writers often ask the question “What’s your process like?”. So I’ve decided to make a post detailing my process.

1. Set your alarm for 9 o’clock, alarm goes off… turn it off and wake up at noon instead.

2. Have lunch

3. Decide to check emails and end up clicking a video link.

4. After three hours on YouTube, you decide it’s time to check your social networks.

5. Facebook leads to BuzzFeed and after what feels like ten minutes of following one Buzz after another it’s suddenly 7:30 and time for dinner.

6. You sit down to write and get maybe a paragraph or two done before you decide you have to research something.

7. Four hours later, you’re some how back at Twitter and you have no idea how you got there.

Oh look more BuzzFeed

8. Finally by midnight you’re determined to get back to work. You write for what feels like twenty minutes and look up to find it’s five in the morning and the sun is bright and shining and really it’s time for bed.

9. Set your alarm and the cycle begins again.

Yaaay… achievements.

Title Announcement

For the past few weeks, I’ve been working on my latest work-in-progress who’s title I’ve kept secret for quite a while now. In fact the only person who knows the title besides my mother and select friends is Jordanna East. But, being that I honestly suck at keeping anything secret I’ve decided that with the premier of my portfolio page debuting tomorrow on this blog and since I include in it a cover design idea I had for my current work in progress I decided that now would be as good a time as any to reveal the title.

FOR YOU TO REVEAL. YOUR TITLE. (there’s no gif for that sorry). Good luck.

Thanks Ru… I won’t.

Series of Possibilities

Yesterday I announced on my Facebook that in the midst of working on my current work in progress, I had (as usual) gotten an idea for an entirely new story. Or at least, a new way to tell an old story anyway. It’s an exciting new adventure that I really want to embark on, I managed to write about ten pages of outline last night for the first book and if all goes as planned I think I might be able to drag this out into a longer story over all. For a long time now I’ve wanted to write a series, originally Secrets of Witches was intended to become a series and for a time that really seemed like a possibility. The original goal was a lofty 13 book main series with a sort of spin off of 5 more books totaling 18 in this particular universe (although at one point I remember thinking it was 20). Within a matter of just a few short months 18 dropped to 8, then to 5 and ultimately down to three within a matter of years. No other story has really felt right for a series because I have too much of a propensity to kill off my main characters for the good of the story. It would be very difficult to try and continue writing a story with 98% of your main characters dead and the very likely possibility that the character the story is about won’t survive the end of the story either. Unless you decided to take it some route that follows their long distant half brother or something, which would be weird.

Nevertheless, this latest idea, has at least with it the possibility of being able to be taken out into a longer series, I’m hoping for at least four but I could really see myself being happy with five or six books too. I think I’m going to have to do a lot more serious outlining before I can make any official pronouncements, and obviously every pronouncement I make should come with the asterisk, subject to change. I promise I’ll keep you updated and hopefully I’ll have a series to work on shortly after my current W.I.P.