Kate Larking's Blog: Anxiety Ink, page 39

Immerse Yourself In Art

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It’s an amazing thing to immerse yourself in art. I spent the past weekend roaming the halls of my old high school – covered in student murals – and watched nine schools compete for a slot in the State Drama Festival in two weeks.

I was also supposed to teach another playwriting workshop. Sadly, that didn’t come to pass as not enough people had volunteered to run workshops, but I received some lovely comments on the one I ran last year.

It was a weekend immersed in art and stories. I analyzed each performance on multiple levels: technicalities of sound and light, each art in its own right, the actors’ deliveries, and strengths of the scripts. I loved listening to people I respect, who know so much more about theatre than I do, discuss all these aspects and more.

Every once in a while, I need the reminder of how much I can learn when I shut up and listen.

So when Sunday came around and my brain rose from its sleep-deprived stupor, I had my own stories banging around, demanding to be let out. That’s the best thing about immersing yourself in art: it breeds ideas and inspiration.

And in two weeks, I get to do this all over again at the State Festival.

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Getting “Serious” About Writing

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I have a nerdy confession to make: since the day I started working, Saturday October 29, 2005, I have written down an account of my work day. That’s how I know the exact day, and time, I started my very first job.

The logs in all their glory.

Since I was little my dad has done this too, in order to keep a record of things he might need to later recall. It seemed like a smart idea, so I devoted a red coil bound notebook to it, one I still have. It’s been eleven years (how did that happen!?!), and the notebook was small, and I’ve worked many jobs since, so I am currently in the first quarter of volume V of my Work Log.

As I’ve grown older I’ve found a certain catharsis involved with extolling my day. Most, if not all, of my jobs have involved human interaction –something I’m not superb at and that I find exhausting– so writing about the events that upset my equilibrium helps me let it go.

Basically, it’s journaling. I have an account of what I did every day in school via class notes, so why not cover what happened at work? I’ve even written about upsetting events in my life outside of work in either a journal or agenda. It’s all about having a timeline and working through my problems.

Anyway, I have a point related to writing. I decided in early January that it makes absolutely no sense that I don’t do this for writing. I approach the craft as my second job, I’m devoted to it, so why don’t I treat it as such? Thus, the Writing Output Log was born, and commenced on Saturday January 23, 2016.

 

My intention is to track the time I spend writing and working on blogs, my productivity, and word output. My big picture hope is to see how I maximize the time I allot to writing-related activities. With proper data, I can better manage myself down the road.

I’m really excited about this! Finding any means to make myself feel serious about writing as a profession is a big step for me. It’s part of the mental battle. Plus I can’t wait to start trying to improve my numbers.

What steps have you taken to get serious about your writing?

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Ambition

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I don’t think I have ever used the word ambitious to describe myself. For some reason, there is a wall between the acts of an ambitious person and my own mentality.

It has taken me until this point in my life to realize that I am ambitious. I take on projects. I step up to volunteer for things that need to be done. I take on a lot of work. I could list off the scores of things I realized I am doing and you’ll look at me and say, “And you didn’t realize you were ambitious until now?”

Yes. I haven’t realized that I am ambitious until recently, where I have realized I have too much on my plate. I started to recognize it when I saw this article come up on my Facebook feed: Work, Sleep, Family, Fitness, or Friends: Pick 3

Source

You don’t really have to go to the article to see what it means; the title is pretty self-evident. The creator calls it the entrepreneur’s dilemma. I would call it a basic mental health dilemma.

The issue I was having with my ambition is that I had split the area of work into far too many subcategories. I have a full-time job–one that demands overtime as well as odd hours. I am a writer of my own fiction and a collaborative comic. I am on the board of several associations. I am in a critique group. I am co-coordinating an event. I blog here every week.

I can’t split my time any further and keep sane. As a result, I’ve faced some hard decisions and taken steps back from things. I’ve resigned from one board already. I’m working on relaxing control over some things at work. I am trying to do tasks for the event faster so they don’t loom over me giving me anxiety.

By removing sub-categories from the Work portion, I am giving myself more power over the ones that mean the most to me.

Work isn’t the only category I’ve had trouble with. There are a lot of things I need to refocus on. But realizing it is the best way to start.

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Writing Workshops

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I approach writing workshops like I do books on writing: with wary skepticism. Actually, I’m probably more skeptical of workshops, with the higher price tag and worse consequences when it’s just not a good fit.

A bad book, you can put down. A bad instructor? That’s harder to get away from.

Most writing workshops and classes I’ve taken have been disappointing. They were nothing like what I’d anticipated. Most instructors got a deer-in-the-headlights expression when I said I write fantasy. And sure, going in with expectations is like asking for disappointment, but the point of a class or a workshop is to learn something. To gain an awareness of other approaches or perspectives.

Most of the time, I was just bored.

I’ve taken a couple wonderful classes, too. I recommend anything with Amherst Writers Alliance (AWA – it’s a workshop method and it’s fantastic) or by Mary Robinette Kowal.

This year, I’m running another (script)writing workshop, like last year at a local high school drama festival. I can’t let myself do the same thing again, so I have to start planning from scratch. And everything I’m drawing on is a mix of what has worked for me as a student, and what didn’t – or what I would have wished in place of what was.

Everyone seemed to have a fantastic time last year, so let’s see if we can make it happen again!

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A Rant On Three Writing Tenets

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Last month I wrote about my joy of breaking a certain writing rule. Today I don’t exactly have joy to share, more like irritation to let loose. And it kind of all started when I read this article.

I’ve been a member of the writing community long enough to hear a few things repeated, and to have developed a few pet peeves when it comes to them. There are three writing tenets in particular guaranteed to set my teeth to grinding: “Real writers write every day.” “Everyone has 30 minutes a day.” “Serious writers write before doing anything else.”

I call bullshit.

“Real writers write every day.” I can’t write every single day. I can’t. I’m not a creature who can sit down and write a sentence for a piece I’m working on and be satisfied that I wrote for that day. If I’m going to work on something, I want at minimum 30 minutes to do it so that I can actually add to my story.

I’m a binger. I’d rather add a lot in sporadic goes than a little bit in multiple goes. Furthermore, I need to be in a specific head space when I write, a headspace dependent on the particular story’s mood, which requires time and energy to enter. I’m lucky if I have one of those things on any given day. More often than not I’m mentally drained after work. Then there are the days where life hits me hard. They’re never good writing days.

If you’re the opposite of me, I’m happy for you. Honestly. Process is absolutely individual. I envy your ability to open your notebook or file each day and add to it diligently. I myself practice a different kind of diligence.

“Everyone has 30 minutes a day.” Yup. I definitely have 30 minutes a day, every day. But in those 30 minutes I’m either cleaning, cooking, feeding cats, grooming cats, playing with cats, cleaning up after cats, going to the grocery store, helping one of my parents, maybe helping a friend, doing dishes, working on the blog, eating, sleeping, exercising, socializing, playing mechanic, playing computer technician, driving, doing laundry, winding down –the bloody list goes on. I work 30 hours a week on top of all that and anything else life decides to throw at me. The people and animals in my life need attention too.

There is always something that has to be done, and those around me pick up the slack enough as it is. Bedsides the fact that I am naturally low energy and I have allergies and anxiety that zap any excess I might have.

Other than the weekends that I leave empty and my two shorter work days, my life is not abundant with extra 30 minutes here and there. The rest of my life can’t be neglected to make room for them. Yes, I take advantage when I can, but those moments are rare and far between.

I am working on finder a better balance but things haven’t made that easy. But I’m still trying.

“Serious writers write before doing anything else.” I mentioned my low energy and non-neglectables, but I haven’t yet mentioned that I am not a morning person. I do not arise from slumber bright eyed and bushy tailed because I am a horrible sleeper. I regularly suffer from insomnia and more often than not from terribly restless sleep that leaves me more tired when I have to haul myself out of bed than when I fall into it. The worst part of my day is getting up. But I do it.

What’s more, writing zaps all of my mental energy. My physical energy is pretty useless when I can’t think straight.

I’d love to be one of those people who gets up every day at 6 a.m., brews a pot of coffee, writes until 8, and then gets ready for the day ahead. That will never be me, and I’m learning to live with that.

I work and I tackle the things that must be done before I sit down to write. One, so that I don’t have to watch the clock and make sure I leave enough time for the other things. Two, so that I can totally immerse myself in my writing without distraction because the rest is done. I’m a better writer when I know my afternoon and evening only need to be filled with the craft.

That about sums up my rant. I know it sounds like a collection of excuses, but it’s not. It has taken me a long time to get over the guilt these three writing tenets have inflicted on me for years. And I’m a little resentful. If you do –and can– follow them, all the power to you. They don’t fit into my lived experience and I’m doing (relatively) fine without them.

I’m still a real, serious writer intent on maximizing the time I manage to carve out on a weekly basis. I’m still learning, still growing, still finding out what does and doesn’t work for me.

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Intersectionalism

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This week has been a thoughtful one for me. While I have been bogged down with quite a few stressors and uplifted by the adoption of two kittens (:o!), I have been reading quite a few pieces on the Internet that I am unhappy about.

The main train of thought started with this post by Mark Oshiro. It is an important read for anyone and everyone about marginalization and discrimination at science fiction and fantasy conferences. Please take a few minutes, click the link and read. (If you are interested, here is the response of one of the most helpful and responsive individuals that was one the committed–she has since resigned–who fought hard for Mark and others at this conference).

I read these posts, the comments, some scrambled non-apologies layered within them. And I really hurt for it. I have been rather lucky at most of my conferences that I haven’t had altercations like this. However, I am starting to encounter more and more conversations where, often, offence wasn’t intended, but awareness was required in response.

I am a feminist–in particular, one that embraces intersectionalism of that feminism. I believe in equality. I am very aware that our society, our world, tends to rely on discrimination and categorization as mental shortcuts.

I am also aware that all literature, including science fiction and fantasy, has a history of prejudice. Authors seen as great figures for the formation of a certain genre were sexist, racist, homophobic, and transphobic despite possibly being forward thinking in terms of artistry for their times.

I am aware that the majority of people are defensive creatures. This defensive behaviour often results in us trying to take less risks, try less things, not stretch our minds as far, because we are fearful of being attacked, called out.

But we need to try harder.

We need to push harder for conferences, conventions, fandoms, and communities to realize and embrace their intersectionality. To do that, we need more literature to be intersectional. We need people to take risks with respect. We need people to listen with dignity. We need people to accept and learn if they have done wrong by someone and continue to grow and become more aware.

We may never reach equality or a level of intersectionalism that pleases everyone. But I’m going to fucking try. We can fucking try. Will you?

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Process & Inspiration: Storify Your Dreams

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Dreams are a favorite source of inspiration for me. They have given me some wonderful stories – usually by offering up bits and pieces that eventually patchwork themselves together, and once by serving up an entire novel.

But dreams are tricky. Dream logic is a law unto itself and rarely translates with ease to any sort of story logic. Faithfully adhering to a dream almost always results in a broken story. Pulling a story out of dream can be hard. It’s something I’ve struggled with for years, so I’d like to share the process that currently works for me.

My dreams – the ones I want to write into stories – are wild things, breathless and beautiful. Waking from them is painful. The story always extends beyond anything I dream . . . or at least remember dreaming.

Few dreams retain a sense of coherence upon waking, whether through my faulty memory or because dream logic deemed such things unnecessary. I record the dreams as soon as possible to avoid losing more of it. They emerge as a stream of conscious prattle, including ideas and musings on how details might relate or connect. I worry less about getting every minute detail and more about capturing whatever stands out: a sound or smell, a setting, a relationship. If I capture even a little of the heady sense of the dream, I can rekindle that feeling whenever I reread the words.

By that point, I’ve developed a better, more distinct idea of people and places. Not all of them, but enough to begin shaping the skeleton of a story. Events, relationships, transitions, all jumbled and mixed together, most likely incomplete.

Then I break them apart. I do this in my head, or by listing each on paper. If you’re a notecard person, I recommend using them here. Put each event, person, place, whatever jumps out at you on its own card, physically split them up and rearrange them. Not only will you likely discover new progressions and relationship, but separating the individual elements breaks them out of the non-structure of dream logic. They become more malleable to story logic and structure.

The stories I am left with after this stage often have holes, gaps to be filled in. Often the premise seems ludicrous, like my vampire-run theme park in rural Maine. But they’re workable story, which is more than what I woke up with.

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Why, Rebalancing, Recommitting

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As I type this post it is only February 7th. Far too soon for a goal check in; not far from when I laid out my goals. And yet I find that I am struggling with one of them already, one I had hoped I’d conquered in 2015.

My desire was to write at minimum 3 000 words a week, 1 500 for the weeks where I write my blog posts ahead of time. So far, in six weeks, I’ve managed to make that goal once. And I allotted myself about an 85% success rate to be satisfied.

I am not satisfied. This is my issue with quantitative goals, but I needed a number so that I had an aim.

Life has been dumb, between work stress, family stress, personal stress, some kind of illness I’ve been unable to shake, and everything in between, I’ve only had that one week to really sit down and focus. I’m trying to give myself a break, I really am, but I’m still annoyed.

Even leading up to this weekend I found myself completely blank for blog topics. Usually I write one or two ideas a week over the course of the month. January provided nada. So yesterday I cracked the book Kate gave me for Christmas because she said every time she opened it she was bombarded with creative ideas.

I read the first segment of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic and then thought back to the week Kate and I chose our favourite posts of Melissa’s when she needed us to cover. The two ideas that tie these items together: why. Why do I write? Why do I put myself through this torture week after week?

Because I love it; because I need it. That’s the simple answer. The long answer is a post all on its own.

As the second month of 2016 ticks away, I’m in catch-up mode (and not just where writing is concerned). I’m rebalancing my life to fit my new work schedule and recommitting myself to the things I want to accomplish. I can’t change January, I have to stop dwelling on what I see as failure, and look towards the next 11 months in which I can get as many words down as possible.

I want to write. I choose to write. I’m balanced and ready to recommit to it. I just need to remember that why.

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Patreon for Writing

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If you’ve been following my comic over at Crash and Burn, you’ll notice that there is a new variable in play when it comes to earning enough to keep the webcomic afloat. In January 2016, we set up a Patreon account (click to see and support us!).

Patreon has been used a lot by webcomic creators, which seems pretty in line with what it was created for. Patreon is a really good system to use to support serialized work. Crash and Burn is pretty much a serialized work, even though there is an eventual end to the main story arc that is currently being produced.

As a writer, I’ve had a hard time reconciling Patreon for writing. A lot of writers I know have, and are successfully, running Patreons of their own. Most of the writers I have seen with them started out doing so as an alternative to the one-and-done Kickstarters or IndieGoGos.

Some of the authors I know that are on Patreon for writing include:

Laura Anne Gilman
CE Murphy
Chaz Brenchley
Chrysoula Tzavelas

The first thing I know that having a Patreon means is having a lot of confidence in yourself and faith in your work. You are asking people to essentially preorder your work on an ongoing basis. While it is true that patrons can cancel any time, it takes a lot of self awareness and confidence to know and attest that you will continue to produce work that these individuals will want to consume.

Second, it requires a lot of upkeep. You need to be on top of making sure that your patrons gets the best, most up-to-date information available on your work and that the bonuses you provide need to be things your patrons want. You have to continue to foster is so they know why they backed you in the first place.

Third, the work you produce needs to be on a consistent schedule. New pages of Crash and Burn come out every Friday. Writing can be similar: a chapter a week, an episode a month, what have you. But it needs to be upheld because you have people providing money for that scheduled security.

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Character (re)Discovery

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My characters make me happy. I find character creation both a bane and a blessing. A bane because my own vanity comes out in full force; at least initially, my main characters are almost always too perfect. If I try to write a stoic, that character is too distant, too alien to be relatable. A blessing because characters are my driving force as a writer.

I am taking a break from the rough draft that has occupied the last several months. It had become an excuse to avoid the story that I should be working on: the novel that, after several drafts, I completely scrapped and rewrote.

A while back, I wrote about the struggle to find my main character’s voice in the new version.

In all the many drafts of the first version, I’d imagined my main character as a stoic. In general (at least for me), this is a poor choice for main characters – particularly female, as cultural and societal expectations of women require a level of emotional availability – because it makes them more difficult to relate to. This is not (yet) a talent I have in my skill set.

However, that stoic personality was wildly inconsistent with the trickster elements that were and are integral to the story.

When I began the rough draft of the new version, having switched to a first-person point of view, I floundered. I realized I didn’t know her. When my critique group read it, every single one of them picked up on that confusion. If the writer can’t pinpoint her character, the readers can’t either.

Now that I’m revising, the character emerging is wonderful and surprising. She is nothing like I had previously imagined and her character arc will be the greater for it. The trickster element that I imagined but never quite executed is present in all her glory. These new discoveries make her more complex and likable; she has become so much more fun to write.

All I did was slightly alter her choices and take my time to build up the side characters in the first chapter to be more complex and three dimensional. The rest just happened on its own.

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