Bryce Moore's Blog, page 212

Great News Alert: New Book Deal

Psst! Hey! Wanna go check out the latest Publisher’s Weekly Rights Report? See anyone you recognize there? That’s right, woodchuck-chuckers. I’m very pleased to be able to announce today that THE MEMORY THIEF is going to be published. First up, the answers to the questions you probably have:

Who’s publishing it? Egmont, the American arm of a global publishing company founded in Denmark. I’d pretend to know what that means, but I don’t. Jordan Hamessley is my editor. The illustrious Eddie Schneider brokered the deal. (Jordan definitely deserves an adjective before her name, now that Eddie got one. I’m thinking “Inimitable.” Inimitable Jordan Hamessley? That might work.)

When will it be published? Fall 2016. 2 years away. That’s par for the course in the world of publishing. Lots to be done between now and then. Edits, copy edits, book design, cover design–all that fun stuff.

What’s it about? You mean you haven’t been following along this whole time as I’ve reported what’s happening with the book on my blog? That’s okay. I forgive you. Here’s how Eddie pitched it:

In THE MEMORY THIEF, 11-year-old twin brother and sister Benji and Kelly are trying to avoid a group of bullies at the county fair when Benji ducks into a tent for The Memory Emporium. He meets a strange old man inside named Louis, who shows him a magically vivid memory of a fighter pilot, in the hopes of getting Benji to pay to see others.

But Louis isn’t the only person with the ability to show and manipulate memories. There’s also the mysterious Genevieve, The Memory Thief. And following a confrontation between Louis and Genevieve, Benji gets the power, too.

Genevieve gets out of control, and soon, a lot people in town are acting like someone has stolen their minds — most poignantly, his twin sister Kelly. Benji must fight his own impulses to cheat his way through life with his newfound power, and work to stop Genevieve before it’s too late.

As I was writing it, I was thinking of it as being in the same vein as some of my favorite Disney horror movies growing up. Something Wicked This Way Comes, for example–or The Watcher in the Woods. Honestly, it’s been a while since I’ve read the latest draft, and I’m looking forward to diving back in and seeing where it ended up. (Convenient for me, that I recently finished the draft of OUR LADY. I hate stopping projects in the middle of an effort.)

In any case, that’s all the big news I have for you at the moment. I’ve been sitting on this for a while, and it’s a real pleasure to finally be able to share it with all of you. (And I didn’t even drop any big “some great news I wish I could share with you but I can’t” messages all along the way. Aren’t I nice?)

You may now return to your regularly scheduled Thursday activities. But feel free to have some ice cream or cake. It’s calorie free today, or so I’ve been told.

Some Advice for Those About to NaNoWriMo

Every year during the month of November, NaNoWriMo comes up out of the darkness, challenging aspiring authors to write their pants off for the entire month. The goal? To start and finish a 50,000 word novel between November 1 and November 30.

I admire and respect the brave souls who choose to sign up for this, although I personally have never done it, and I don’t think I ever will. So much of who I am (both as a person and as a writer) hinges on routine and consistency more than anything else. NaNoWriMo seems to me to be very much the equivalent of sprinting, whereas I’m all about the marathon.

That said, I do have a few pieces of advice for those who are thinking about doing NaNoWriMo–How I would approach it if I were going to do it. (Which, strangely enough, I might kind of be doing in a roundabout way. I just got a solid idea for a novel that I want to explore. It’s going to be fairly short. I’d figure 50,000 words or so. I have a month long window to try and hash most of it out . . . ) So think of this as a mix between advice for you and a decsription of my current writing plan. (Which seems to change for every book. Oh well. So much for “consistency,” right?)

Break it down into manageable chunks–I know this is a no-brainer for most people, but it really is the only thing that’s kept me sane. 50,000 words in 30 days? For me, I wouldn’t be writing on Sundays (for religious and mental health reasons), so that means I’d have 25 days of writing in November–and that includes Thanksgiving. Even I can do that math. 2,000 words a day for each of those 25 days, and you’re done. On a normal day, I shoot for 1,000 words, which takes me about 45 minutes on average. But the bulk of that time is spent gaining momentum. By the end of my writing session, I’m often going at a very fast clip. I’d imagine I could be done with 2,000 words in under an hour and a half each day.
Don’t fall behind–Meet that daily goal, no matter what. If you have to stay up late, stay up late. In my experience, as soon as you miss a day, it becomes so much more difficult to tackle the next. If anything, I’d try to get ahead and stay ahead. Writing because you want to is ever so much more fun and enjoyable than writing because you have to.
I personally would start with a basic concept of character and plot–a spot where the character begins, a big problem he or she is facing, and an end point you want them to get to. I’d have a general idea of some cool points along the way they might encounter. For everything else, I’d just write off the cuff. I’ve done plotting, and I can’t honestly say it’s always worked out well for me. If you’d asked me two years ago, I think I would have said plot it out ahead of time. The me today is saying just write like the wind, however you see the story going. The me a year from now will probably be back to plotting. I’m fickle like that. But when I have a great idea and a direction to head, I figure, why not explore it and run down that path as fast as I can. If I only lose a month in the process, that’s no big deal. I might lose almost that much being bogged down in plotting and planning, anyway.
Stop writing in the middle of a scene–the middle of a sentence, even. It’s always easier for me to start up again when I know exactly what I’m going to write. This doesn’t mean I interrupt myself in the middle of a key scene, but I don’t like tidying everything up neatly at the end of each day. Keep the writing edge wet, just like painting.
Tell other people about your plans. As soon as you make it public, you’re committing yourself much more than any private determination. Any goal I really want to accomplish is a goal I try to shout from the rooftops. Sometimes it means I fail spectacularly, but I almost always do better at it than I would have if I’d just made a mental note.

In any case, my overarching piece of advice would be to have fun. Don’t worry about making everything perfect. Accept that there are going to be rough edges to what you’re writing. Go back after you’re done and revise that thing until your eyes bleed. But while you’re writing, do it because you love it. Not because you want to sell it, or because you want everyone else to love it–do it because you love it. It’s the only way I’ve found for my writing to come alive.

Good luck, all you crazies out there. Don’t forget to eat and shower once in a while!

Sexual Assault Prevention Training: I’ve Led a Sheltered Life

As part of some training at work, I’ve been watching some videos on how to prevent sexual assault and sexual harassment. These aren’t just short 5-minute affairs, either. It probably took an hour or so to get through the whole thing, which is part of the Not Anymore campaign. They’re well-produced and probably quite effective, but let’s just say that I never came across anything like them during my undergrad days at BYU.

I’m not saying that BYU is an alcohol and sex-free environment. Then again, in 2013 it only had 3 criminal offenses (all of them sexual assaults) and 14 liquor or drug arrests–at a campus of over 31,000 students. T0 put it in comparison, the University of Utah (32,000 students) had 153 criminal offenses (lots of burglaries, apparently–9 sexual assaults) and 96 drug or liquor arrests. To put that even further into comparison, Penn State (46,000 students) had 163 criminal offenses (36 sexual assaults) and 1,335 drug and liquor arrests. (My current employer? University of Maine at Farmington (2,000 students): 4 criminal offenses (no sexual assaults) and 45 drug and liquor arrests.) (For more fun with statistics, see here.)

To have 16 times the students and still have one third the drug and liquor arrests? Those statistics say something, folks. They say that my undergraduate years were pretty darned sheltered in comparison to many.

This is just background information to put my response to this training in context. The Not Anymore approach is basically to show a series of videos that discuss what’s appropriate and inappropriate when it comes to sexual relationships. They’re not graphic, but they definitely leave little to the imagination about what’s going on, and it’s so different from my college experience, I couldn’t help but be a bit wide-eyed.

Case in point: almost a third of the presentation was focused on how to determine if the other person wanted to have sex with you or not. What does “no” mean, and what means “no”? That sort of thing. For me at BYU, things were fairly clean cut: unless the two of you have stood in front of an altar or a judge and said “I do,” then sex is pretty much out.

It talked about what to do if guys corner girls in their room, or how to get out of a situation where a guy’s essentially trying to rape a girl. What to do if you see an acquaintance get drugged. How to handle a drunk friend who’s getting taken advantage of.

Basically, a rundown of the many situations I’ve never experienced in college. I don’t mean to be dismissive of it–I’m all for people being more aware and more protective of each other, and if this program helps even one person avoid getting sexually assaulted, then it will have done something important (and I tend to think it will do much more than that–it’s helping to raise awareness, which I believe will do much in this area). All I’m doing is wondering if things have always been like this, or if they’ve gotten more extreme in the last 15 years.

Thoughts?

Attack of the Rodent Horde

If there were a director I’d choose to helm a reenactment of the scene at my house every October, it would be Peter Jackson. Hands down, slam dunk, no brainer. Because whoever it was would have to be able to capture the essence of a battle that spans years, not just days or weeks.

Every year, I think it’ll go differently. I’ve made changes to my defense. I’ve plugged up holes, reinforced traps and bait, come up with new approaches that helped me win the war last year. But every year, it’s the same thing.

I picture those little rodents massing outside the walls of my house, plotting their attack routes, sending out scouting expeditions to look for breaches in the defense. And then, as soon as the cold weather starts settling in, they unleash the horde of scrabbling and scratching feet, of twitching whiskers and beady black eyes.

The mice attack in force, and they do it with gusto.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night to another one of their drunken parties–the ones they seem to like to hold right in the ceiling above my bed. I picture them in there, doing the mouse equivalent of this:

This morning, the mice made a grave mistake. Perhaps one of their biggest blunders I’ve ever seen them make. They didn’t contain themselves to the ceilings and the walls. They couldn’t settle for a clandestine scurry across the floor in the middle of the night.

No, this time, they went for Denisa’s fruit. Two pears and an apple–three more casualties of war. And if these mice were capable of abstract thought, they would know they just released the kraken.

I wouldn’t be surprised if I came home today to find a tiny row of mouse heads lining the railing on the front porch. I wouldn’t be sad to see it, either. Looks like it’s time to reload the traps, up the ante, spread out the poison, turn the defense up to 11, and get medieval if we have to.

Because these mice . . . they have to be stopped. And we’re the ones who have to stop them.

Knowing When to Throw in the Towel

I’m a finisher. One of the first things I learned writing was the importance of follow through. Of actually finishing the projects you start.

It seems like such a simple principle. One that’s universal. A rule of thumb that should always be followed.

But it’s also sometimes just plain wrong, and that’s something that’s taken me much longer to learn. In many ways, I look at writing rules like math rules. When you’re starting out, it’s nice to believe things are clean cut. There are rules, and you follow those rules to be successful. But as you get deeper into the field, you realize that sometimes the simple rules are just covering up the harsh reality.

Up to now, I’ve started work on four novels, only to set them aside for various reasons. Typically what happens is I have to put them aside to work on something more pressing (deadlines, etc.), and when I come back to them, the thrill is gone. Sometimes the thrill leaves in the middle of me working on them.

The trick (for me) is in figuring out why exactly the thrill left, and whether it’s worth barreling onward until the thrill comes back.

But first, what is the thrill? For me, it’s the passion in a project. The desire to find out what happens next. I get wrapped up in the story and the characters, and I just have to keep writing. It’s almost a compulsion, and it’s absolutely necessary if my writing’s going to be any good. That said, it’s also something that often disappears in the middle of any book I’m working on. I’ll be going gangbusters, and then suddenly I’m not anymore. I’m stuck in the middle. I know where I want the book to end up, and I know how it starts, but the stuff in between is this conundrum, and wouldn’t it be nice to work on something else for a while instead?

That’s an example of when I’ll ignore the lack of the thrill and soldier onward. It’s a known obstacle, and like the leap of faith in The Last Crusade, I’ll make it, confident that I’m not going to plummet to my doom.

But there are other times when I see that a project just isn’t going to pan out. The conflict is broken somehow. The main character is boring. The voice is clunky. The plot is stupid. And so I walk away from it and go find something else to write. I usually only do this if the “thrill” is gone for weeks at a time. If no matter what I try to do, I just can’t get it back.

Will I return to the four projects I’ve set aside in the past? Well, let’s put it this way: I considered listing them here for your consideration, but as soon as I typed them and looked at them, I thought better of it. Some good ideas are stuck there. Sooner or later, they might come in handy. So yes, I might go back to them someday.

Just not now.

And add a fifth project to that list. I’ve been trying to make my latest first draft (about a psychic family) work for the past two weeks, but it’s just not there. The main characters are whiny and broody. The plot is convoluted. The magic tenuous. Yesterday, when I was writing my short story about my pizza expedition, it was so much fun to write. I had a blast doing it, and then I went to work on my book, and it was like pulling teeth.

And suddenly it was clear: time to set it aside.

So I’m on the lookout now for another book. I’ve got a whole long list of ideas, but I’d really like to do another Middle Grade work. Something that’s short, sweet, and to the point. Something that’s fun. I’m not up to broody or moody or whiny right now. Sorry, Psychic Family book. It’s not you.

It’s me.

Operation: Free Pizza–An Autobiographical Short Story

[NOTE: Departments may or may not have been changed to protect the innocent.]

It started the same as any other day at work. A minor crises or two, a slew of emails, some paperwork to push. We were having some computer issues: the catalog kept going down, and some of our internet connections were dropping in and out. Still, nothing a crack team of librarians couldn’t handle.

And then I got the call from IT.

I picked it up with my normal routine: “Mantor Library. This is Bryce.”

“We’ve got an emergency,” the voice said.

My heart dropped. An emergency? From IT? This had to be bad. ”What is it?” I asked.

“They’re giving away pizza somewhere in the Student Center. For free. But we don’t know where, and it’s been going on since 11:30.”

I glanced at the clock. 11:53. This really was dire. On a campus full of students, offering free food was like spreading out chum to a thousand starving great whites. Once they got a scent of that blood, eyes glazed over and natural instinct kicked in. That pizza might be on its last legs even as we spoke.

“Roger that,” I said. “What’s the call?”

In seconds we had it all planned out. I was going to run a sweep through the top level of the Student Center, and IT would run a counter maneuver from the ground floor up. The first group to encounter free pizza would establish a perimeter at a table and repel all invaders. If we met in the middle, then we’d know that the worst had happened: the pizza had been consumed before our arrival.

I grabbed my coat and umbrella (you can never be too prepared) and headed for the door. The first few seconds were going to be crucial. If anyone stopped me–even for a moment–our entire plan might disintegrate in front of my eyes. But I knew the key to avoiding distractions: a determined, annoyed expression, and a brisk walk. Even so, I tried to avoid eye contact with people until I hit the Student Center.

As soon as I walked through the doors, my worst fears became realized. Students were everywhere, and they all seemed to have a plate with a piece of pizza on it. The scent of pepperoni wafted through the heating vents, and I worried that might be as close as I’d come to pizza today. Why hadn’t I checked the calendar? How had we let this pristine opportunity pass us by?

IT and I have an understanding. We all keep an eye out for free food opportunities, whether it’s a couple of mini-muffins being handed out at an art reception, or an entire spread of appetizers and brownies at a luncheon. Between our two organizations, we typically have most bases covered. We have connections that spread across the campus, a complex web of interactions that ensures none of us miss a mooch.

Still, even the greats have their off days. We wouldn’t even have known this was going on if it weren’t for a student worker coming back from the pizza and letting IT in on it. What separates the masters from the novices all lies in how they respond in times of trouble. We didn’t waste time worrying. We sprang into action.

No pizza on the top floor. None by the cafeteria. None down in the corner of the building. I kept scoping the halls, every step bringing my expectations lower. And then I saw it: an open door with a sign for pizza hanging on it, right there on the ground floor. Surely IT had gotten there first. The only way this could get any worse was if all of IT ended up with pizza and I was too late for any.

I entered the room, my eyes going straight for the telltale pizza boxes. There were six left. They weren’t stacked up, though–which made it likely that there were still a few slices left after all. Then again, none of the students were hovered around them, which made me wonder if it really was too late. On the other hand, I noticed some canned soda down at the end of the table. I raised my eyebrows. No one had mentioned free soda. It wasn’t pizza, but if I moved quickly, I’d at least get something out of this expedition. I scanned the room for any IT presence. They hadn’t arrived yet.

Typical IT. Claim an emergency, and then take forever to show up.

Well, it would be their loss. I crept toward the pizza, dreading that I’d open the box and find it empty. I lifted the lid.

Cheese. Slightly burned.

I grimaced. It wasn’t perfect, but I’d settle for it in a pinch. I quickly uncovered the other pizzas: green peppers, burned pepperoni, and then some sort of mystery pizza that looked like sausage, but you couldn’t be sure. Obviously we were down to the dregs of the pizza, but even dregs are better than nothing. I grabbed a plate and some napkins, then took a slice of the pepperoni and one of the mystery sausage. In times of desperation, you have to take risks.

As promised, I went to a table and defended the free space until IT arrived. While I was waiting, I decided to give the mystery slice a chance. If it turned out to be nasty, I could always pretend I needed more napkins, then grab a second slice of pepperoni when I went up. You have to keep up appearances, after all.

I took a bite, and my eyes widened. This wasn’t mystery sausage: this was meat lovers! A thick crust topped with a layer of sauce, then ham, then pepperoni, then more ham, then a thick strata of cheese, and then that sausage sprinkled on top. These students had been avoiding it, not knowing what they were missing. Talk about a lucky break. Not for the first time, I thanked the moocher gods that most free food never gets labeled.

IT arrived moments later, and in no time, we were celebrating the spoils of our mission. It had been precarious–even treacherous at times. But we’d overcome adversity. I checked the time: 11:55. Hard to believe it had all gone down in less than two minutes. It’s true what they say: time slows down during moments of extreme stress and hardship.

I sat back from the table, took a deep gulp of Mug root beer, and settled in to enjoy another successful freeloading operation.

Mountains and Molehills

They say you shouldn’t make a mountain out of a molehill. (I have a couple of questions about that. First off, who is this mysterious “they”? And what do they have against molehills? Whoever they are, they’re probably not liked very much, if all they do is go on about mountains and molehills all the time.)

Where was I?

Oh right. Mountains and molehills. I’m all for the proverbial wisdom of the ages and all, but let’s face it: if you’ve got enough moles, and they all team together and work really hard, those moles can probably come up with some pretty astonishing feats of engineering–up to and including the construction of mountains.

Or at least that’s how it seems to work in my life.

It’s not that I have anything huge going on in my life at the moment. No crises. Nothing that’s sucking away all my time all at once. There are no mountainous problems in Bryceville these days. But there are a whole slew of dedicated moles. Some of them larger than others. And when you’ve got that many moles working against you, you stop caring about mountains and become much more concerned about slowly suffocating under an avalanche of mole-loosened dirt.

Have I taken this analogy as far as it will go? Probably. Will I drop it? Reluctantly.

What do I do when I get all these little molehills swarming around me? (It appears I’m not going to drop it after all.)

I make lists. Lots and lots of lists. I list down every mole I can think of, from the big ginormous ones to the little bitty baby ones. I put them all on a list, and then I look at that list and convince myself why there really aren’t that many moles to begin with. I know it sounds silly, but it really does work for me. Once all my problems are in one spot, it becomes much easier for me to deal with them all.

Of course, that approach doesn’t always work. So I was wondering what other people do when they start becoming besieged by moles. Do you have any mental hacks you use to overcome them? Any calendar or scheduling tricks that help you stay sane? It’s not that I’m close to losing it at the moment, but let’s just say it wouldn’t hurt to have a few more tips on how to deal with them.

 

Movie Review: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

I’ll be honest: I didn’t want to like Ben Stiller’s remake of the Danny Kaye classic. Danny Kaye is awesome. What was Zoolander doing screwing around with good movies? (I like Zoolander a fair bit, but it’s a far cry from Danny Kaye.) Still, it was a remake of a movie I really enjoyed, and sometimes you can’t resist a good train wreck, so when I had the chance to see the film, my hesitations weren’t enough to keep me from watching it.

And at first, I was only looking for reasons to dislike it.

That’s a really hard spot for a movie to dig itself out of. When your audience is primed to find fault, then it’s almost always an easy enough task to give them what they’re looking for. With that as a prelude . . .

I really enjoyed this movie. 7/10 stars. Is it the best movie EVAR? No. But it’s very solid family-friendly entertainment that keeps you laughing and shows you plenty of very well shot visuals. The story fits together quite well, and it’s actually a lot of fun.

Part of this is due to the fact that, as with the original, they took the core of Thurber’s short story (about a daydreaming everyman) and added to it. With Kaye, they added a spy story. With Zoolander (I suppose I ought to start calling him Stiller), they inserted the character into the role of a romantic comedy. Stiller works for LIFE Magazine, and he’s about to be laid off. He has to find a famous photographer to potentially save his job. (That’s a clumsy overview, but it’ll work for now.)

So they didn’t really just copy the original movie. They did something different with it. That’s a great sign of a hopefully successful adaptation right there. Still, it appears that my opinion of the film isn’t one shared by most reviewers. (It’s got a 54/100 on Metacritic, for example.) I liked it for its good clean fun, for the way the daydreams foreshadow the action of the movie. Yes, it’s a film with a Message, and at times they hammer that Message a bit too hard, but I can’t really fault it for it. In many ways, it’s a movie that matches its main character more because of that Message. (And that’s all the M’s I’ll use for a while. Sorry about that.)

Anyway. It’s worth a watch, if you’ve been avoiding it. Perhaps I went lighter on it because I was expecting Awful. Then again, it’s got a 7.4 on IMDB, so clearly I’m not the only one who enjoyed it. Anyone else out there seen it? What did you think?

Why I Loved The Wire

I just finished the final episode of HBO’s The Wire last week. I’ve been waiting to review this series until I’d seen the whole thing, mainly because it’s so (relatively) old at this point–it didn’t feel current enough to warrant season by season reactions, even. (Plus, a big group of my readers will probably never watch the show–see my previous rant on HBO and Netflix and the pornification of good television.) But this was a series that Entertainment Weekly voted “Best TV Show of All Time.” I had to see what the fuss was about.

And I’m really glad I did.

Taken as a whole, I would have to agree with EW’s assessment. The Wire is certainly the best television show *I’ve* ever seen. Not that it was the show I loved watching the most, if that makes sense. I mean, I love Battlestar Galactica, Buffy, Lost, Doctor Who–but there are pieces of all of them that really don’t work all that well. They were a blast to watch, but you don’t want to start thinking too hard about some of them, or they suffer from weak beginnings or spotty episodes. Other shows like Downton dip too much into soap opera.

The Wire stands out from all of them because of a few key elements:

Character–Great acting performances across the board. These are characters that we get to know really well over the course of 5 seasons, and yet they can continue to surprise us time after time. Just like with real people. You might think you have someone pigeonholed, and then they go and do something you never would have expected. At the same time, they also just keep being who they are. I loved the character of McNulty, because he’s so self-destructive. He’s got a long stretch where you think he’s finally redeemed himself . . . and then he can’t help but continue shooting holes in his life boat. And the sheer range of characters–so many great stories. So many great performances. I loved how characters who usually didn’t interact would suddenly come across each other in a storyline, and I loved seeing how they responded to meeting each other. So well done.
The story–5 seasons of really well done storytelling. After the first season, you think you have the show down: it’s a cop/drug dealer drama. And then suddenly in season two, it’s about dock workers? And then it’s about politics, school districts, newspapers, social workers, legal systems–it just keeps going in new directions, while somehow feeling the same throughout it all. Very impressive. At the same time, all characters were fair game. People could die or have life changing experiences at any time, and it didn’t have to be in a way you’d expect it to go in a story. Someone might live through an experience that should have killed them, only to be gunned down in a random act a few episodes later. In some shows, that might be really frustrating. In this one? It just made it feel more true to life.
The end–I don’t remember a show that worked so well with its ending as The Wire did. It essentially brings the whole series full circle, ending where it began in a way that felt true to life. All those problems and conflicts we’d seen over the past five years? They haven’t gone anywhere. The beginning of the show was just the ending of a different show, and the ending of this one is the beginning of another. A great package deal.

There are definitely elements of the show I could have done without. The nonstop swearing and the early season insistence on random sex scenes, for example. McNulty’s serial killer in season five is an element I’m still up in the air about. It gets really close to soap opera territory, but at the same time, it’s McNulty, and it’s just the sort of stunt I could see him trying to pull.

In any case, I really enjoyed the show, and it earned every point of my 10/10 rating. Say what you want about HBO, but they put out some very fine TV series, from an acting/writing/directing/producing standpoint.

I know I’m late to the party, but I’d love to hear from other people who watched the show. What was it like seeing it as it came out week to week? What did you love? Anything you hated? Do share. (And if you’re local and don’t have HBO, know that I just purchased the entire show on DVD for the library. How’s that for service?)

Journaling at the Beginning of the Day Instead of the End

I’ve been keeping a daily journal since the day TRC was born. I’d journaled before then off and on, of course. A fair bit in high school, fairly regularly on my mission, sporadically in college. But when my first child was born, I decided I wanted to start being consistent again, because I didn’t want to forget what it was like to be a new father. Hard to believe that’s over ten years ago now.

Of course, some things have changed over that time. I write this blog, for one thing. My journal entries don’t hold a candle to this blog, most of the time. I jot down what I did and little more at this point. The big, deep thoughts typically get plastered online for everyone to read. There have been times when I’ve considered ditching the daily journal because of that. It’s just one more thing to do in an already busy schedule, so why keep doing it?

But there’s value to be had in being able to look back at any specific day and remember what I was doing on that day. I still like to go back to my old journals and check them out, and so I soldier on.

Still, I’ve developed a couple of tricks to help me stay on top of journaling. The first one is to make sure I do it every day. When I skip a day and then have to go back to make it up? It’s always harder to remember what I was doing that day. But my favorite (perhaps unorthodox) journaling trick is to write the entry for the day before I’ve actually lived it.

I know it doesn’t make sense, and it’s also a trick that doesn’t always work, but some days I can get by writing down exactly what I’m planning to do that day. It’s the journaling equivalent of calling your shot. This is something that typically works best on a day off or a Saturday. I can write down how awesome I was that day, and exactly why I was so awesome, and then all I have to do is go out and do the thing I already wrote I would do.

Yes, I am able to trick myself with some pretty lame psychological hacks, apparently. But I figure, if I can trick me, maybe you can trick you.

Anyone else out there do this sort of thing? Or do most people not even keep a journal these days?