@hg47's Blog: The Tweet & The TakeAway, page 5

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When tech lets us do things more easily, we do those things less reflectively. We are not thinking about where tech is pushing us.

Technology succeeds by making things easier. But that technological success can be disruptive.

When I upgraded from a typewriter to a word processor, that change did not increase the quantity of my word count output, it reduced it. It allowed my bias toward quality to move from the background of my artistic creation to the foreground. While I was getting bogged down in the first draft trying to smoothly integrate poetic depth and literary special effects into my prose, other writers were doubling and tripling their productivity.

I imagined that I could regain my productivity, and super-charge it, by getting into voice recognition software! I would dictate the first draft, brainstorming out-loud, and crank out a novel in a month! Perversely, I am unable to talk and create original sentences at the same time. Probably for the same reason that I can never think of the witty repartee until after everyone at the party has gone home.

So, while I imagined that technology would speed up my writing, when I moved from typewriter to computer, instead it emphasized my internal bias to getting it all "just right" in the first draft. Technology moved me, but not in the direction I anticipated.

Sometimes I think people are the reproductive organs of Technology.

[Naughty sexual analogy deleted]

@hg47

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Life Is Shorter Than You Think!

Life is short, like a tweet; your days, like characters, are all used up, almost before you click TWEET.

Starting to realize how little time I have left. The multiple dreams of my youth laugh at me. Well, yes, I could have achieved THAT, if I had a 400 year lifespan and an unlimited supply of beta-blocker pills.

Please women in bed? Well, no, time or penis size or tongue agility doesn't seem to be a factor here for me: ain't gonna happen! Ever!

But most people's dreams are limited by time, and by personal application, by focus, by dedication, by nose to the grindstone. Or, in my case, by my addictions, my compulsions and the occasional perverse whim that becomes a habit.

Sometimes I feel like MY LIFE is drifting, falling, like a soon-to-be-dead leaf separated from my tree.

@hg47

P.S. -- What's your pleasure? Rake? Or leaf blower?

Ｗｈｅｎ Ｉ ｃａｎ’ｔ ｔｈｉｎｋ ｏｆ ａｎｙｔｈｉｎｇ ｔｏ Ｔｗｅｅｔ

Ｗｈｅｎ Ｉ ｃａｎ’ｔ ｔｈｉｎｋ ｏｆ ａｎｙｔｈｉｎｇ ｔｏ Ｔｗｅｅｔ, Ｉ ｊｕｍｐ ｕｐ ａｎｄ ｄｏｗｎ, ｗａｖｅ ｍｙ ａｒｍｓ ｗｉｌｄｌｙ, ａｎｄ ｔｈｒｅａｔｅｎ ｔｏ ｈｏｌｄ ｍｙ ｂｒｅａｔｈ. Ｖｉｓｕａｌｌｙ.

For a tweet I can use an alternate character set, angled text, or spew a #TwitterArt pattern, on the theory that if I say nothing pretty enough, maybe my friends will think it is something.

That takes care of tweeter's block, but what about writer's block? What about a novel? How do I get started, and keep going on a project that may take a year or two just to complete the first draft?

I've read so many HOW TO WRITE books that the main thing I can say with confidence is that what works for me, won't work for you without modification. Probably. All my writer heroines and heroes seem to have different methods of coaxing the words out onto paper. Jane Austen wrote on little strips of paper about 2 inches wide, yet with PRIDE AND PREJUDICE she womanaged to create the format for the modern novel which novelists use today 2013 with our word processors & Print On Demand & eBooks & Legacy Publishing Houses crashing and burning in flames all around us. (Critics in Jane's time seem to have trounced her enthusiasm for playful exposition and excessive dialogue, because all Jane Austen's later novels conform to the styles of her day.)

For me, I have to become emotionally invested in a project and get emotionally "fired-up" to actually start a novel. If my emotions don't drive me, the project won't go anywhere.

By now I have an established MO for writing a novel. I start brainstorming for a month or three on a rough idea for a novel; I throw in any thoughts that might work from my personal library, and usually do some or extensive research on specific points that might be useful. Along the way, I am developing a DEFAULT PLOT: this is the plot of the novel I will write if I can't think of anything better. I am also developing a DEFAULT OPENING: a way to start the novel, if I can't think of anything better. By thinking and working on this, pretty much EVERY DAY for a month or so, eventually, I get so excited that I have to start; and I jump into the first draft.

As I write the novel, I continue to work on this brainstorm file, modifying the Default Plot as I write. My first draft "opening" never survives as the opening of the final draft, although it might find a home in the final draft modified later in the text. The Final Draft Opening is the toughest writing for me: I can never get the opening to a polished excellence that pleases me; at some point, I just give up tinkering with it.

I know from experience that I need at least a 3.5 hour block of time for my writing, or there is no point in even starting for that day, as it takes me about an hour to get up-to-speed so that I am actually writing new words. The first hour is mostly re-reading and polishing the prior pages, while I get up to "escape velocity" where I am so buzzed on coffee and my vision of where my novel is going next, that I start actually typing NEW WORDS. I am not a morning person. I work best at the end of the day, after a couple of cups of coffee.

I do not recommend my method to anyone else. It is slow. The fastest first draft I ever wrote for a novel was BLUES DELUXE at 9 months. DAUGHTER MOON took me 2.5 years to complete the first draft. The advantage to my method is that my actual finished product has subtlety and depth. QUALITY versus quantity.

If you want QUANTITY, try doing your creative work brainstorming an OUTLINE of 25-100 pages that can then be "translated" into first draft prose quickly (by an assistant, if you don't have the time).

@hg47

So, how is your literary career going?

Me: “Read my book!”

LITERARY AGENT: [grabs book; slaps me in the face with it; throws book in mud]

Me: “So you’ll think about reading it?”

So, how is your literary career going?

@hg47

Blurbs From Dead Writers

Damn. The only blurb Homer gave me for my time-travel novel DAUGHTER MOON was: “The journey is the thing.” He wouldn’t even look at me!

One of Barbara Rogan's posts made me laugh, the way she was humorously presenting obviously fictional blurbs for her books from dead writers.

http://barbararogan.com/blog/?p=163

There may be a meme here. Anyway, her idea has sparked some creativity, and I'm doing some variations on this, all tweet-sized.

All Shakespeare said about my time travel novel MOON was: “What man art thou that thus bescreen’d in night So stumblest on my counsel?”

“Housekeeping ain't no joke,” Louisa May Alcott said as I tried to get a blurb from her for my time travel novel while doing her laundry.

Well, my science fiction novel DAUGHTER MOON is about time travel; can't I, the author, go back in time to get blurbs from dead writers?

@hg47

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It is possible to chase the positive feedback, produce product that resonates, change your very thoughts, emote differently, until you automatically please and reinforce and multiply the positive feedback. Some would call this success.

Well, yes, if you don't mind becoming someone else. Some would call that losing your soul.

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ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ
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Bring your uniqueness to the party. That which makes you different, is that which makes you YOU. @hg47

The Internet

I keep pressing the lever. When do I get my reward?

The Internet: two and a half billion humans pushing keys to get their reward pellet.

We're getting something out of sitting in front of computers, tapping away for hours, but what exactly?

Obviously, we are getting "rewards" or we would not keep doing it.

Perhaps many of us are finding a sort of interactive dreamworld that trumps IRL in narcissistic pay-off.

A few of us are actually making money at this activity of staring into computer screens and fingering keyboards; others of us, see our "page view numbers" increasing and our "eBook purchasing numbers" increasing and our LIKES increasing, and we smile: my life may be shit now, but extrapolating from the "numbers" my future is so bright I have to wear Time Travel bracelets on my wrists and escape into another TIME and hide inside a 5K protective Field to survive the envy and stalkers and paparazzi and angry competitors who want to be me.

@hg47

My Procrastinations Can Beat Up Your Procrastinations

Quick, what am I doing, Right Now? I am "goofing off" spewing a GoodReads blog post that doesn't even go to my GoodReads timeline; because it is FUN!

A stack of procrastinations, things I've done before that I like to do, that are safe and friendly and ARE KEEPING ME TRAPPED INSIDE A CAGE!

I talked about "being a writer" for about a year before I wrote much. Eventually, talking about "being a writer" wasn't enough, so I started reluctantly writing. "Talking about being a writer" was my form of procrastination.

So, choose your procrastinations wisely. If you are clever about it, your procrastinations will edge you, ever so slowly, into your destiny. @hg47

Want A Bright Future?

When they tell you to "Get Your Life Together" what do they really mean? We are a bundle of involuntary responses, unconscious actions, habitual behaviors, compulsive activities, and addictive maneuvers [excuse me, womaneuvers ] masquerading as human beings. Our "free-will" is like the froth floating on a beer—which we habitually and enthusiastically drink down, until there is nearly none.

Change A Habit And You Change Your Whole Future

Want a bright future? It's easy. Just replace your habits, one at a time.

Nah, gimme another beer. @hg47