Darren Endymion's Blog, page 11

Wrapped Up and Distracted

Note: This was written a few days ago and I think I am now in the clear. The ending is new.

Work is killing me. The books I’m listening to are driving me mad. My leg, which was getting better, is once again spasming and weak. I feel like I’m pushing a great boulder uphill, only to find that there’s another me trying to push it down the same hill and wondering what the hell is getting in the way.

Work: I’m still working 10 hour days at least 5 days a week. I get home, am too tired to do much other than nap, eat something fast because I have no energy, and then put Forensic Files on in the background and space out for a couple hours until I have to start getting ready for bed.

Solution: GTFO. I got my review last week and it was the best it could be. I got the highest raise on the team. I’m getting a sizable (for me) bonus. My bills are paid and I’m a clear asset to the team. Time to start working only 8 hours a day. Maybe even taking some time off.

Books: Everything I read is inordinately inspiring. This is good and bad. Good because I have all this creativity. Bad because it is likely happening at the expense of other stuff I’m trying to do and have no time for. I read Anne Rice and I suddenly wanted to write about 7 novellas about a family of witches from the viewpoints of the witches. Some would be bad, some would be kind, others wouldn’t care. Fantasy setting or real life, I didn’t care. I decided to read the comic where Iceman came out as gay (Jesus, when he built the wall of ice between him and Jean Grey as a form of denial…yes, I actually was touched. Fuck emotions. Someone who hasn’t had to come out to others or to him/herself can’t really understand fully). I suddenly wanted to get the super hero novel idea from my mental chest of delayed ideas and write about it. All of it.

Solution: write the ideas down and put them away. Make sure that they are real and not just something I’m getting wrapped up in for only the time being. Let them grow or die in my head.

Leg: I saw an old friend this past weekend. He’s like 6′ tall, beefy and muscled, and he was really excited to see me. We went out to lunch and he grabbed me, hugged me, and flung me around. My legs — both of the fuckers — decided to give out on me in agony. We danced in the parking lot as I tried to regain my balance. He supported me, I told him my issues, and tried not to be embarrassed. I’ve been working them out, you see. A little too much, I think.

Solution: Go easy. By kicking my own ass, I am strengthening my legs at the risk of weakening them in the short term. That leaves me open to injury when they are down and out. If I injure them, then all that working out and stretching and effort is not only wasted, but detrimental. I want to be better a year ago, but by overdoing it, I’m only going to hurt them more.

So, all of that is distracting me…or was when I originally wrote this over the weekend. As with the solutions I have added tonight, some common sense has to intrude. Sometimes the passions of the moment only serve to damage us in the long term if we are not careful, prudent, and wise. Literature is inspiring; if it weren’t I would care enough to try to be a writer. Activity is important for my state of mind and sense of independence. But if I hurt myself further, that will put me out of the game longer. Work is great because it pays the bills, but too much of it leaves no time for the real life it’s meant to help support.

And so it goes. A little temperance, a little equanimity, and some thoughtful progress will get me further than brash, heedless charging.

10 Types of Writer’s Block

Once again, I am ripping off another person’s work. Since I recently suffered from uncharacteristic writer’s block, I wanted to spread some irony and write about it. Most articles will tell you how to get around it with creative exercises, going for a walk, making a collage, writing about yourself, putting a character in your shoes and seeing how he/she would deal with something that happened to you, and so on and so on.

However, I found an article I thought was both different and intriguing from this normally helpful (if common) noise. To read the original, very good, very informative article by Charlie Jane Anders, head here: http://io9.gizmodo.com/5844988/the-10-types-of-writers-block-and-how-to-overcome-them. There you will even get fun pictures of old science fiction books that I will not be including here. Some of what was said was, for me, pretty significant, and I kept picking up on things I have done. Her contention is that there are different TYPES of writer’s block, and recognizing what type you have will guide you in ways to overcome it.

So, let’s get to my butchered paraphrasing, shall we?

1) You can’t come up with an idea.

This is where you stare at your monitor until you want to chew through it and then go binge watch Netflix. The advice for this is to do all those writing exercises I mentioned above: write a fan fic, write about some random character’s death, write about another falling in love, write a diary entry. Whatever. Write. Don’t sit there with brain constipation, straining and pushing until you give yourself…what, mental hemorrhoids? Ewwe. Moving on.

2) You have ideas, but they all fizzle out or you can’t pick just one.

I do this ALL. THE. TIME. Apparently, I’ve been doing the right thing. You can’t force yourself to feel passionately about an idea that you just can’t get excited about. If you have another idea, put the current one in your “For Later” treasure chest and do something that interests you. She says something in her article which I think has enormous wisdom, and I shall quote it here for you. “It’s possible that someone with more stubbornness could make one of those ideas work right away, but probably not — the reason you can’t get anywhere with any of them is because they’re just not letting you tell the story you really want to tell…” Preach! She also says — and I find this to be true as well — that your brain is working and working. You’re probably only days away from something that really gets you going.

3) You have an outline but can’t get through one part of it.

Guilty! Some people don’t use outlines, some do. I do. I like to know where I’m going…even if I ignore it and allow the story to take me elsewhere. Usually the reason you’re stuck is that people aren’t acting the way they should and a part of you knows it. Don’t force your characters to do what they wouldn’t. Hack that outline up and go back to where it started to drift. Sometimes you can’t get from one good moment to another and have to slog through the boring stuff. Try taking a detour. Take the story in a different direction, even if it’s to distract you. Leave the boring parts out and then come back. It’s like taking a step back and looking at it for what it is, not what you want it to be.

4) You’re stuck in the middle.

You were going along great and then BAM! Wall in the face. Small spoilers for Stephen King’s The Stand ahead! Mr. King was stuck, woefully stuck on what many consider his greatest book ever. He didn’t know what was wrong. He went for a walk…and realized there were too many people and too many plot lines. So? Plant a bomb in the closet and kill off a bunch of people. By taking himself out of it and going in a totally unexpected direction, he fixed the problem, added tension, and made everything better (plot-wise. I hate that some of those people died.) Mark Twain did the same thing with Huckleberry Finn with making Huck and Jim take a wrong turn and get lost. Kill some people. Be dramatic. Do something drastic.

5) You think you’ve done something terrible to your story…100 pages ago.

There’s no trick to this one. Kill it. Go back and rewrite. That’s DEPRESSING! I once lost 2-3 chapters of something I was working on and it took me months to recover them. I had two options — to rewrite them the way they should have been or started where I was, writing things the way they would have been had I written them correctly…and then filled in the gap later. It’s like going from A to B to C, realizing that D and E are trash, saying “screw it”, deleting D and E, and starting point F, only to go back and fill in D and E with what they should have been. This is painful and there’s no way around it. If you want your story to be good, that is. Sometimes it helps to know where you’re going and work backward.

6) You’re bored with all your characters and they won’t work.

Kill them. *evil laughter* Kidding! This is about those characters not having something to do. Plant that bomb, make them take that wrong turn, kick your favorite off the top of a ladder and write what happens. You can destroy what you’ve written later, but this is likely to get the juices flowing. And sometimes having your characters not doing anything is setting up the world. No novel is all action and drama. Neither is life. Sometimes we have to do laundry and clean the bathroom and go to the dentist (and I devoutly hope none of those things is like being in an action movie or overly dramatic.)

7) You imagine all the terrible things people are going to say about you.

I do feel this. My first or second review ever was from some hag who said she didn’t read the whole book and whose record shows that she has rated about a hundred books and rated only about 5 of them over two stars. I had a terrible experience with the editing process, too, and I let THAT get to me for way too long. I wasn’t as tough then as I thought I was and it got to me and I stopped writing for a while — something I deeply regret. It happens. Chances are you’re being too hard on yourself and/or making all that negativity into more than it really is. You can never please everyone and you shouldn’t try. Ever. Writing is often a selfish act, so you need to make sure you’re happy. Did you learn? Did you do the best you could? Do you like what you’ve written? Yes? Then sucks to the naysayers. If not, then learn and don’t repeat the same mistakes later. To let that get to you and to let it stop you is not only defeating and stupid, it’s a perversion of your desire and talent. Trust me. I speak from experience here.

8) You’re stuck for JUST the right word.

There’s no secret here. Just move on. Fill the space that word should occupy with something like XXXXXXXXXXX and move the hell on. Ever seen Throw Mama from the Train? (Good lord, watch it if not. Hilarious!) Billy Crystal plays a writer suffering from tremendous writer’s block…because of the first sentence of his newest novel. The first sentence, people. He gets as far as, “The night was…” and can’t finish it. He was stuck like that for months. Yes, it’s a comedy but even when I saw it as a kid I thought, “Skip the first sentence, damn it!” Ditto for a novel/story title, a chapter title, an action scene, whatever. It’s like they tell you when you take a test as a kid. Skip the ones you don’t know so that, if worst comes to worst, you get 1 question wrong and not the 20 you didn’t finish when you were stuck on that one. Sometimes that word choice is important, but don’t let it be a roadblock.

9) You liked the story idea at first, but now it just feels stupid.

Probably your inner critic. Kill it. If that’s not the case, you might be on to something. You have the option to abandon the novel, but you should only do that as a last resort. Try writing a synopsis of what you’ve written. It’s like flying above a village to take in all the damage…or lack thereof. Sometimes you can write something from someone else’s point of view and see how things look from the other side.

10) You can’t get through revising your story.

Revising is a pain in the ass, let’s just be clear about that. It forces you to go through and pick apart your story. Sometimes a passage or even a sentence will kick you in the face. One thing you can do with a problem passage is to not work with what’s there. Don’t rearrange a sentence; just rewrite the thing totally without looking at the original. Sometimes this will help. You can do this with entire scenes. A synopsis will help sometimes. However, there’s no real substitute for honest revisions and working hard at it.

Hopefully some of this helped you. It certainly did for me. Feel free to check out the rest of the blog from which I pilfered and paraphrased this, as it is full of some very insightful articles on writing. Here’s a link to some of her other pages: http://io9.gizmodo.com/tag/free-advice. I’m gonna go read some of them now. Later!

Emotional Release and Writing

I think it’s important to come to writing invested emotionally, but not so distraught or distracted that you cannot come to the work. Sometimes real life intrudes, and I wouldn’t say that it ruins the experience, but it can foul up your mind until what you’re producing is subpar and not worthy of you. Or, as I mentioned before, you have characters acting out of their realm of normalcy without the situation dictating this change.

I tend to bottle up my emotions. I’ve always done it; I don’t know if it’s because I’m a guy and there is that life-long pressure to hold it all in, or if I’m just that way. Nature or nurture, it’s a fact. Whatever the reason, I tend to bottle it up until it explodes outward or I end up stupidly emotional over the dumbest, smallest things and choking it all back. I have heard that it’s a Taurus trait. This distracts me. I can’t have any emotional experiences or run the risk of overreacting and acting like a damn fool. When writing, it gets in the way of what I’m doing.

An emotionally touching scene? Ruined by the irrational anger I’m feeling because I dropped something on the carpet. Something sad and poignant? Thwarted by my unreasonable amusement at reading a line in Let the Right One In about someone being so boring that he makes the clocks stop. A funny quip? Annihilated by my brooding over some highly sensitive interaction with a total stranger. All stupid, all over dramatic.

Luckily, it doesn’t happen often and I’ve gotten better at expressing the emotions to let off the emotional steam before it gets in the way. I was not successful at doing this recently. I noticed that I was becoming overly emotional every time I would write a scene or read part of a book or playing a video game. Annoying. So, what I did was pop in a sad and touching movie, Still Alice, and let myself react to what was happening onscreen.

Have you seen this movie? Watch it and see Julianne Moore earn her deserved Oscar. Some people can watch it and not get involved or try to point out the flaws rather than get the message of some real, true tragedy — even if this actual movie didn’t happen to actual people, Alzheimer’s is alive and well and hurts so many people. I allowed myself get caught up in the movie and I must have cried or been on the verge of it for 40%-50% of the movie. Maybe I’m exaggerating, but it affected me. Afterwards I watched the live action Cinderella, which was cute and romantic and featured a gorgeous Cate Blanchett playing a horrible bitch.

That combination of movies allowed me to release the sorrow, laughter, fright (did you SEE the Fairy Godmother’s teeth?), and hope I needed to expiate. Afterwards, I decided to take out my notebook and jot down a few notes for my current writing project. An hour and a half later, hand sore, I had blown through the blocks and barriers I mentioned before and had pages of notes.

Sometimes to progress, we need to listen to what our bodies and minds are telling us. That’s not to say that writing and other artistic endeavors can’t be used as therapy — I would never suggest something so blasphemous. You need to feel and toil and care with your characters or other creations. Art is therapy. It is often the framework on which life is held. Artistry without emotion is dead.

Sometimes, though, we get caught up in everything and it interferes with the immediacy of our creations and aspirations. Sometimes we need to watch a sad movie and cry it out.

Mystery Solved, Victory Elusive

I mentioned on Twitter that I had achieved a very rare and dreaded state for me (and for most writers): writer’s block. I am rarely afflicted with this mental bane, but rather am usually struck by the Truckload of Laziness. That I am at least used to.

At least I realized what I was doing wrong finally. I usually have a pretty good sense of my characters, and I had these two guys doing something they absolutely, unequivocally would never do. They would be courting death, essentially. One of them MIGHT do it because he’s impetuous and full of the brash, single-minded stupidity of youth. The other would never…and I mean NEVER do what I had him doing.

I think it says something that my mind balked at going any further, and I’m glad for it. We’ve all probably read books or seen movies where a character does something and you’re thinking to yourself, “Now, who thought that this would be a good idea? S/he would never do that!” It’s a cheat, and when someone does it, it’s usually because the plot’s momentum requires that something specific happen, and the author needs to sort of force it. It’s easier of course to make a character do what you want, but it feels…dirty almost. The answer is to make it happen a different way or to rewrite the scene. Since this is disagreeable, one is tempted to just leave it and move on. Now, I mentioned that I’m lazy, and that’s true, but I’m not lazy like that. That’s pretty much being a hack and I owe it to myself and any potential readers to be honest.

However, I haven’t figured out what to do instead. It’s a problem, yes, but I’d rather spend more time trying to figure it out than plow forward. Unfortunately, NOTHING is coming to me. So, I’m trying to skip ahead. Where do I want this to end overall? What am I leading toward? How can I further this novel in this scene?

I’ve still got nothing. I never get this blocked, and it’s disconcerting. Maybe I need to go back even further. Maybe there’s a problem earlier on, which leads me to this dead end. One of the issues is that many of the people have their own hidden agendas which I need to remain true to, even if they don’t come out until much later (or in one case, not until the next book). Honestly, I think it’s more that work and life have intruded and I’ve had little time to sit down and reason it out. I will, though. And it will be fine. But in the meantime, I’ve got a mental block that’s making me want to chew through my monitor. Wish me luck. *bleh*

Back it Up

No, I am not referring to anything licentious, least of all “dat ass.” I am referring to my laptop, which is currently giving me digital middle fingers. I am unable to find the root cause of said issues, though I have searched hard for them. I might have to actually reformat the entire laptop, erasing everything on it.

When it comes to data, I am a hoarder. It’s almost sad. I expect an intervention to occur at any moment. Pictures, converted videos, music, old writings, video game emulators I’ve used once, licensing information for my job, guided meditation worksheets, random written research (in outline form) on everything from Elizabeth Bathory to Arctic foxes…the list could go on and on. Like any hoarder, it’s all stuff I plan to use one day, but don’t actually use all that often. I do use it for everyday use and writing and internet access, and there’s some important stuff on there, but a lot of it is stuff I don’t want to part with but could.

When my computer started acting angry with me, I deleted a few things, made sure that good stuff was on my portable 16GB USB, and did some elimination. The problem persisted — no matter what I do, the C drive says it’s full. I have looked online, deleted temp files of all sorts, am compressing everything, deleting more and more, defragmented the thing, and the problem persists. By my account, even with programs, I should have a little over 60GB used, and I should have a great deal more memory available. Luckily, when it was clear that my computer was throwing a temper tantrum, I managed to get everything. I back everything up regularly, not only on my desktop, but on my external hard drive and USB.

I was not so wise once. My first computer ever caught a legitimate virus and I lost so much. I did a lot of writing at that time and I would back them up on these little colored diskettes. The Fates decided to screw me without lube, dinner, or even an introduction, and not only did the computer crash (requiring a full reset), the stupid diskettes decided to give out on me. I lost 2.5 chapters of something I was struggling with anyway. (I’ve mentioned this project before as something I still think is genuinely absorbing and good, but that was doomed to the chest. I will bring it out eventually, rest assured.) It took me forever to rewrite those chapters, and I’m convinced they are significantly better than they were, but it took me months to recover mentally from all that loss.

Since then, I obsessively save everything. Adding to this, an writer acquaintance of mine (I have mentioned her fantastic advice of not letting an editor change your voice before) had someone try to take one of her novellas, change one of the male characters to female, and try to publish it. One of her fans alerted her to what was happening, she e-mailed the publisher immediately, that publisher halted publication, etc., etc. Most writers have this irrational fear of their work being stolen and/or plagiarized it almost never happens (damnable file sharing sites aside). But my friend had to prove that the work was hers, up to an including showing revisions she made with her editor and the time stamp on the files (if I remember right).

This, like her aforementioned advice, has stuck with me and likely always will. Consequently, I have entire folders devoted to dated, unrevised drafts of my work. I have this backed up in three places. I have learned the hard way, and though I treat my computers well and they last me far longer than expected (perhaps this is my real problem), I back everything up. Multiple times. Don’t let a feisty, pissy, angry, or weary old computer wreck you. Back your data up. Frequently. In more than one place.

I am not worried or horrified at this old laptop deciding to be cruel. It can surely be fixed and I have everything stored. It will be nothing more than an inconvenience. I refuse to go through that nonsense again. Don’t’ be an idiot like I was. Back. It. Up.

Workload Vertigo

Sometimes we just have too damn much heaped on our backs. We’ve all had those days (weeks/months/millennia) where it seems as though our agendas and plans are insistently and directly crapped on by the cosmos. If you are one of those sick people who thrive under this sort of pressure (or, for the sake of the metaphor, enjoy getting crapped upon), then you are a mutant and don’t belong on this planet. Science doesn’t understand you and neither do I. You’re like one of those people who lament that they “Just CAN’T gain weight” when someone mentions being on a diet…and then wonder why you wake up in a hospital bed, unable to remember anything since your 5th birthday.

For those of us normal people, balancing hectic schedules and trying to make changes becomes rather difficult. With all the overtime at work, I am raking in the money, but I’m in this vicious cycle of work, eat, bed, repeat. I might be able to play a video game here and there (thank you PS Vita for allowing us to suspend a game instantly and without penalty) or write a little with stolen work time (as I am doing right now) or read in bed, but the cycle perpetuates itself. I’m trying to incorporate more reading into my life, which is something I have failed at so far, yet finding the time to really just sit and read and dive into a book has proven impossible. I always have at least one audio book I’m involved in and will listen when doing anything — dishes, cooking, working out (when I get the time to do that), laundry, etc. — but there’s no substitute for getting in there and reading for yourself, sort of communing with the written word, and as a writer (aspiring, established, ongoing, anything), it’s pretty much your obligation to do so.

But overtime IS a factor right now. My whole team is slowly going insane and it happens every year. One person began emulating a wind-blown, wacky, waving inflatable tube man…for the second year in a row. Over the weekend, on her sixth work day of 10 hour shifts, a woman fell asleep and hit her head on her desk. My friend just notified me that she has worked for nine hours today and has only just realized that her underwear are on backwards and she’s too tired to go turn them around. After all, she’s only going to be here another two hours. However, it must be better than previous years because we haven’t had the paramedics show up since January 1st. (For the record, I’m not exaggerating any of this. By this time most years, paramedics and a fire truck have been here at least twice. And yes, I work in a country and a state with labor laws.)

Even if overtime wasn’t a factor at the moment, it’s still difficult to balance this workload of intentions, obligations, and desires. After all, all work and no play…makes Jack try to kill his family. (If you didn’t get that one, please watch The Shining immediately). I’m trying, but I have workload vertigo. I feel like I’m spinning, trying to clutch onto anything for some balance. I’ve been able to do a little of a lot of things, but the attention span tends to waver when you’re at work for at least 10 hours a day and the only amount of caffeine that will do anything anymore is just as likely to kill you as to wake you.

What shocks me is that I’m managing. I’m not doing much, but I have to realize that working myself into the Nervous Wing of the nearest sanitarium isn’t going to be very productive…and all my work would still be waiting for me when I was released, twitching and with a newfound phobia of keyboards. The writing is coming along at a pace I’m too embarrassed to admit to. My reading isn’t faring well, either. But any movement is good.

Something is better than nothing. So, I shall grin and bear it and plot my escape for tomorrow having done only 15 minutes overtime. I hope my Workplace Location Chip doesn’t go off…

Late Resolutions and a Glance Back

(This is a long one, folks. Strap yourselves in.)

Not just to be contrary, but I tend to make my resolutions for the New Year about a month later than everyone else. I think about my previous year and what I want out of the next.

Last year at this time, my mother had just passed. We were never that close, so I felt her loss in ways I hadn’t expected. In the end, I told her I loved her, and I let her go, and any of the bitterness or anger I had went, too. I was glad that when I heard how serious her condition was becoming, I established contact and made an effort, even while lamenting that it took something so serious. It made me able to let things go, and to appreciate what I have in the moment.

Then at work there was the famed Prince Scientist. Good gods, that man was beautiful. I had made so many changes within myself and to my ways of thinking and to my self-esteem, yet I still couldn’t conceive that someone like that — beautiful and educated and smart and kind — could ever be attracted to me. I have since found out that he was with someone at that time, so our furtive glances and sidelong looks and Jane Austen-style across the room longing was all that we could have had.

However, that in no way changes the fact that he wanted some of me. *cackle* It’s that old adage about hindsight being 20/20. The man took my breath away. Every time we would pass the other we would exchange subtle glances, we would stare when we thought nobody was looking, and we both got huge smiles on our faces whenever we saw each other. I heard the following phrases almost verbatim from people who didn’t know there was anything going on: “Wow. Did you see the way he just looked at you?” “He just totally gave you side-eye when he passed! AGAIN! He does it every time he passes!” “Does he always smile at you like that?” Yet he was with someone, and part of me wonders if that’s why nothing more was ever pursued…and it makes me respect him more for it. I’ll probably never see him again, but it was a lesson I hope to put into being this year. Trust my intuition; trust my own eyes; and sometimes hot, smart, nice guys are interested in me. And what could that possibly say about me?

Last year at this time, I was also in great physical agony. Every time I would stand, I would be wracked with painful spasms which felt as though the very marrow and bones in my left leg were trembling from the stabbings of Satan himself…and nobody knew what the issue was. Until I saw a chiropractor. He has fixed my rotated pelvis and my angled spine. I could walk again and was building strength.

Until about a month ago when it all started again. With all the constant pain I was in, my normally perfect blood pressure went insane. When it all started happening over a year ago, my doctor put me on high blood pressure pills, with a diuretic included. Over time I noticed changes. I was getting weaker because of inactivity and had all sorts of aches and pains. We all figured they were normal because my entire skeleton was being rearranged. Then my leg started the spasms again…only it was the opposite leg. I talked to my chiropractor, a massage therapist, a pharmacist, and did my own research…and figured out the problem. With the diuretic, I’m peeing out all my potassium and magnesium and phosphates. I looked at all the symptoms and they described me as though I was being watched by health care ninjas. I have stopped the diuretic and am taking magnesium supplements. It’s been less than a week and I can just get up and walk without stretching and pausing and waiting. I haven’t been able to do that in over a year without pain or spasms or fear of falling down. I no longer have calf cramps every single time I stretch. I no longer have all those inexplicable aches and pains. My mood has improved. I can walk downstairs without fear. I’m young still, and I’m starting to feel like it for the first time in a year. The lesson? Listen to your body when it’s telling you something. I’m seeing my doctor next week.

And my writing? You didn’t think I’d forget that, did you? My first novel (and the only one, so far), Winter’s Trial, was difficult. The writing was easy, but the editing phase was…challenging (and that’s being kind). I left it wondering if I wanted to publish with them again, if I wanted to continue the series, and if I was cut out for the business and social aspects of writing. It shook me, and I pushed aside several concepts and novel ideas because of that suddenly tremulous confidence.

I wrote a short story titled The Snow Queen (which I love now but hated then) for an anthology and the editor was very good and very hands off. Still, I wasn’t sure. Then last year I wrote another story titled Threads of Discord, for another anthology and it was…okay. I’m still really not that fond of it, and it was (at best) just okay to me. But the editor! Sweet gods, the editor! I learned more from her in about 30 pages than I did in hundreds from the others. No fault to anyone, I just think that she and I got along instantly…and she’s very, very good. She is funny and knowledgeable and personable and offers criticism in a way that tells you that you’re working on this together. She was never once condescending (the WORST) or sharp or mean-spirited. She has graciously agreed to edit my next book, even though it’s second in a series. My lessons here are: push forward, toughen up, be true to yourself, trust yourself, and good things will come your way. I’m ashamed that I ever let that first experience shake me so much, and I hate that it stopped my writing, but I think I am better for having gone through it. Now I have that experience, that thicker skin, and a good editor in my corner with whom I am excited to work again.

And so, looking back on my year, I have all this experience and all these things I can do to improve my life. From the pain and the unhappiness and the work and the joys I can start fresh without casting aside the lessons I have learned.

Really Hard Month, Yet…

This month has been a bitch. In fact, January has been such a bitch that it invited all its sisters and brothers over to have a party, and all they are doing is judging the other months, calling them fat, and saying how much better the other parties are. I’ve asked them to go away, but all they do is say that they were invited by Ms. January and then inform me that there are no hot guys at this party. I’ve asked the police to take them away, but the unsurpassed Bitch Power of January frightens even them away.

My month involved 10 hour days, ridding myself of a druggie friend who should have been flushed long ago (loneliness can make you choose the worst people to keep in your life), inadvertently tapping into a very disturbing dynamic between two people who would put Harold and Maude to shame, calmly telling a coworker I was on to her shit and thereby almost dividing my work team, proved unexpected loyalties lay with me, tackled a huge writing project and finished it, given myself intimidating and terrifying goals for 2016, and started a long-delayed novel.

There are other things that have happened, like someone I removed from my life over three years ago tracking me down because he claims to have missed me. He has been in a relationship for 4 years and tried to get all sexy with me within the first hour of us talking again (I am now the not-so-proud owner of no less than 5 pictures of him. The only shocking thing is that none of them have been of his junk. At least not yet.) Within that hour he said that I should have married him, once again asserting that he was in love with me over 5 years before I stopped talking to him.

It was the second mention of marriage this month, and the second that made me recoil in horror. The other was the aforementioned druggie friend (and ex), who turned bitter and sullen and silent when I turned down his cheap-ass texted proposal and subsequent trying to explain that we would be great together. Then he pretended it was a joke. And decided to stop talking to me, totally “coincidentally”. I realized that he was hurt by my refusal, and I tried to be the good guy, but ultimately I realized that I’m just not that lonely to keep someone in my life who only passes the time. My time is better filled by myself. As I was trying to be nice, I found myself hoping that he would continue being a stubborn child, and when I saw my out, I took it. Let him think it was his doing. I don’t care at all. I am fucking free. It proves that you can care about someone and hope he gets better and even love him, but be disgusted by and sorry for the person he has become…and extricate yourself from the situation. Happily.

I’m also about 90% sure that I have found the source of my continued leg and general health issues, and it’s so shockingly simple that I am horrified that I haven’t thought of it until now. I get to start changing that tomorrow, and it’s only going to get better from here.

It has been a bitch of a month, let me tell you. And yet, through all this life upheaval, overworking, disagreement, cleaning karmic house, health realizations, and being forced to stare my own bad decisions in their handsome faces (with lunacy hiding behind them),  I have managed to work. I have amazing scenes popping into my mind for my writing, for this project, for the next book, for the book after that, and for other projects — including something new that astounds me, something I want to write desperately, but I’m not sure if it will ever make the light of day.

It has been hell, awful, changing, enlightening, and sobering. And through it all I have managed to write and be productive.

Which means no more excuses.

 

I Actually Did It

Last time I was talking about a barrier to my continued writing, and how if I didn’t finish that, there would be ongoing episodes of interruptions as time went on. I thought that, while I was in that mode, I might as well finish all eight parts of this large undertaking (plus two bonus parts if I was feeling ambitions). However, when I started, I realized that this would be a hell of a grueling, monstrous task, much longer and more involved than I thought. Then I thought, “I’m just being a pessimistic idiot. It’s not that bad.” And I was right.

It was way worse.

It was long and hard and disheartening. I stopped in the middle of it, frustrated and stumped and as crabby as I’ve been in a long while, struggling with the writing and the word flow more than I have in years (this stuff is closer to poetry than prose, and I am capable, but less practiced with the former). I finally went to bed at about 3am on Saturday night, slept in till 7am, tried to get up, to which my body promptly responded with a derisive laugh, and crashed again until about 10.

In the light of day with some sleep behind me, I realized that what I had done was somehow, miraculously, thankfully not only coherent, but GOOD. It was exactly what I wanted. More than I could have expected. I realized that, though this was torture and difficult and wretched, I was doing it, and I was absolutely correct — to do this right, I needed to do it all at once, devoting 2-3 days to it. The eight parts of this whole had a cyclical quality, they mirrored each other with a sort of funhouse distortion that was absolutely what I needed and wanted from this.

I jumped in the shower and suddenly three scenes from the novel I had been neglecting to tend to this pressing project flooded into my brain. They were strong, they were jumbled, and they hit my still tired mind with the kind of force Jack Nicholson used on the bathroom door in The Shining. I thankfully was not reduced to the shrieks and weeping that Shelley Duvall did on screen, as it might have alarmed my roommate and caused paramedics to eventually burst through the bathroom door like deranged Kool-Aid men. “Oh yeeeeeeah!”

I finished the remnants that day. Then earlier today, still in that spirit, I tossed in the two bonus parts and finished them. I honestly didn’t think I could do it. It was involved, tiresome, and ultimately rewarding beyond what I could have expected. I thought I bit off a three week project. Instead, I did it in two and a half days. And the quality didn’t suffer for all that, which is also amazing — it was shockingly clean for the time and frustration involved.

So, tonight I take a breather…or at least I meant to. My hands are sore, my brain feels like I put it in a meat grinder, I’m tired, yet I read over the synopsis for the novel…and I’m adding to it. I can’t help myself. I suppose there are worse things to do despite your better judgment (murder springs immediately to mind. *cackle*). I didn’t think I could do it, but I did.

Now on to the next project, and I hope that this vigor stays with me.

Paused Progress…or Not

I had planned to come here tonight to talk about how, despite our best intentions, sometimes life intrudes, and it intrudes with a deadline. I was going to talk about how my normal writing had to pause — only temporarily, mind you — because something came up that I had to work on and get perfect by the beginning of February. I was going to talk about how I was sick of my own excuses not to write, and that this was feeling like another one, even if I know this is a real need and has a definite deadline.

But, none of that applies…or does it? I did in fact have to take a small break, and it was definitely for something pressing, but I took care of that. When looking at it, I realized that there are other parts to it, and those are going to come back to bite me right in the butt cheek if I don’t do all of them. Since I finished this one part (plus three others), and there are only eight parts total, and they are best done together, I’m wondering if I should pursue this. I’m doing well with it, it’s a finite project, I’m half done, and it’s going to come up again in about a month and a half, when I imagine I will be in full steam ahead mode with my novel, rather than at the end of the planning stages. Better to do it all in one great sweep rather than making myself stutter and stop whatever I’m doing every month and a half, right?

But what of the thread of the synopsis of my novel and my pursuit of this (so long in coming)? Given my penchant for procrastination — something I would be an Olympic gold medalist in were it a sport — I’m asking myself which should I delay. If I do both at once, I know that each would be delayed or prolonged and my attention would be divided. It’s a conundrum, isn’t it?

However, I know myself and believe I have figured it out. When I have any time alone, my mind immediately spaces out and I think about anything. When I am writing fiction actively, I daydream about what I am about to write, and will sometimes allow the characters in my mind to play out their little joys and dramas and triumphs and turmoil. If the scene is good, it goes in the story. If not, or if it’s not worthy of being in print, it’s not time wasted because I’ve spent time with my characters. I know them better for it. Therefore, if I read over what I have of the synopsis so far, I can use that down time, that before bed time, that idle time to progress the novel in my head. Then when I am sitting down at a desk, I can deal with the very intricate parts of this other project and be done with it within a week while I’m still on fire with it. Then all that idle time spent with my characters will spur me on to writing about them without this awkward break that I have to sort of warm up after.

Essentially, when life intrudes, tackle that shit, be done with it, do a good job, finish it so it doesn’t come back to bite you later, and then get on with your business. I’ll let you guys know how it works. Wish me luck!