Leo X. Robertson's Blog, page 14

What are you supposed to do with your life?

I recently tried to listen to Henry Rollins on Joe Rogan’s podcast, because I usually find the guy inspiring, but something about this discussion with him irked me. That’s fine, even better, maybe: we learn the most from people we don’t agree with, and I’ll happily expose myself to the rational intelligent views of those I don’t agree with for as long as I can hack it.

He said, more than once, ‘You’re gonna die in a cubicle!’ about office workers, as a counterpoint to the type of peripatetic life he leads. Clearly he enjoyed that line, but he seemed to offer it more as a slight than a putative wake-up call. I write this from my desk in an open-plan office. I would love to have a cubicle to die in. But imagine I didn’t want that: ‘Oh shit! I’m gonna die in a cubicle! I’d better escape from this office! Let me buy a ticket to Bermuda. Oh the site’s not working. Okay I’ll just get the train to the airport. It’s not running? Oh wait! Is the way I’m living my life such a bad thing or is society so efficient because most people beaver away at specific tasks that they perform in the same small space day after day? Hm, well when I think about it like that, I’m kinda noble. Honey? Call Henry Rollins and tell him we’re busy Thursday: I don’t think I can take listening to his stories right now.’

I heard how often he brought up many facts he’d picked up on his journeys. At first I was jealous, but I thought about it more and remembered that travel has never instinctively interested me all that much. When I think of where I’d go if I wasn’t just going there to say I’d gone there, the list is so short I’m almost tempted not to bother at all. This being true, left to my own devices I’ll underestimate how much I enjoy travelling, but if there exist satisfying lives for us to live, I have to imagine that they’re mostly available without having to travel, since we arrived before planes did.

I then realised there was a kind of desperation about Rollins’ “cubicle” line, not one brought about by the constant spectre of Death, as he put it, but more a lack of understanding of certain lifestyles, a feeling of exclusion. When he mentioned that he didn’t know why everyone didn’t feel the same panic and urgency of death every day, I thought, ‘No, you probably don’t, but that doesn’t make other people wrong.’

Reality is never that big a deal compared to what the imagination can make it. We’re also programmed for that lesson to never fully sink in, since we’re supposed to keep wanting stuff and hence imagining how great it would be. As a result, I’ve noticed that those who haven’t gone to university, for example, can tend to be insecure about it and manufacture exalted statuses for those who have, leading them to feel like they’ve always got something to prove. And Rollins’ proselytising on the importance of travel and intercultural mingling got me feeling like I had to prove why it was okay for me to stay in the same place. And, well, I’m gonna!

Who would need to do all the things Rollins has done and go to all the places he’s been in order to feel satisfied? He’s a very rare type of restless soul, one that’s mostly inspiring, but he’s also someone it’s just not feasible for all of us to be. Most of us aren’t like him, and why not? I ask that curiously, but I got the feeling he asked it jealously. High productivity comes with high restlessness, and I think the wondering isn’t ‘I don’t know why people don’t wake up and feel like I do about life’ but ‘Why isn’t your burden the same as mine?’

None of us align precisely, which is partly the point. But those of us whose spectre pokes a bit less must be more satisfied with the lives we’re leading than we realise. Truly the happiness of Norwegians, for example, is a result of their ability to gain deep satisfaction out of ordinary lives, which is a gift I don’t possess or want, though I wouldn’t rag on them for having it.

I’ve said this many times, but since it’s such a constant debate, I’m just going to mention this as much as possible: you can’t come to Norway and be as happy as a Norwegian, so relax and stay put. You just have to have been born Norwegian to be as happy as them. And there’s more to life than happiness. I’m about to go to lunch. The conversations will be about the weather, skiing or home renovation. Everyone knows life is nicer when everyone agrees. But is that the point?

I’ve learned more about people by staying in the same place for many years, which has allowed me to pile observation onto observation, and just when I think I’ve learned everything, my mind steps it up a notch and offers me access to a greater method of understanding subtler cues in those around me. This is most apparent when I sit down to write fiction and think of a city in which I could set it. I have maybe three: London, Stavanger/Oslo, Glasgow. Other people and places I don’t know that much about. I could just invent some fake city to set the story in, but I wouldn’t be able to achieve the same authorial voice, depth of world, level of characterisation, confidence in plot. This being the case, someone who skates around the globe can probably expect to gain a broader understanding of life, but not a deeper one. Of course, at different times of year, different times of the day, even, we might operate at different points along that spectrum, and no matter which most-of-the-time solution I pick, Rollins, having been on the planet longer than I have and having been engaged in life in some respect always, probably knows more than I do either about the broadness or the depth of life.

One definition of happiness, I think, is that after considering your own death at great length, you decide to return to the life you’re already living.

However, I can’t tell if indeed the life I’m living is the one I’m supposed to be living even although I didn’t really plan for it. Maybe my mind has adapted to convince me the life I’m living is the one I’m supposed to live, since this is highly conducive to my survival and, when applied on a wider scale, to the survival of humanity at large. Sometimes we’re creatures of habit to our detriment, but we mostly are out of necessity. Or, rather, we tend to be creatures of habit. Fact. Think of it one way or another: it doesn’t really matter.

Most of my days are like a 7/10. Is that maybe too high, though? Shouldn’t I be pushing myself harder and introducing more discomfort? Who the fuck knows? Time for a beer.

By the way, there’ll be a new episode of the Losing the Plot podcast very soon. It’s a venture I’m super proud of, and much like my exposure to other world views through existing podcasts, it’s a joy to challenge my perceptions by being exposed to so many different opinions. It makes your intuition momentarily displaced, but then your perceptions align with it again, even harder than ever, because they’ve been tested. Though it would do us all well, I think, to remember that inside all of us is the strongest guide to who we’re supposed to be. There are no answers out there—only refinements.

On Bad Writing

What does it mean to be a bad writer? I hear so often, so surprisingly these days, words spoken with too much authority on what is and isn’t good writing. At this stage, every possible thing that can be done with words has been pulled off successfully. So who is anyone to tell anyone anything?

I’m a believer that if a style requires anything—adverbs, passive sentences, reams of unattributed dialogue, weird punctuation, split infinitives, sentences ending in prepositions or starting in gerunds or conjunctions, use of the past continuous tense (which even clever writers who’ve been doing it for a long time don’t understand isn’t the same as passive voice), Oxford commas or independent clauses separated by commas—go for it, man. Even Robert McKee, with his rather rigid form (and not formula) for scripts admits that all he does is give writers something to think about. Even Mary Karr, with her Art of Memoir, admits, after lists of well-researched rules, that a writer’s voice may require them to break any or all of them. When I was reading works by some favourite writers, before I even knew that much about writing—David Foster Wallace and Haruki Murakami spring to mind first—I thought, ‘Dude, you’re not really supposed to do that. He solves the puzzle in a dream? You’re just going to tell me how the character felt about that situation? You’re not really supposed to dwell on that description. How come this guy has in-depth knowledge of astrophysics but uses the word “irregardless”? Nothing’s happened for pages! But why am I still reading? Why does this work?’

All a writer really needs to do is remain compelling to themselves somehow for the full length of whatever they’re writing. When writers come at me with too much formality, with strict adherence to rules that aren’t rules, I feel like they’d rather I place a gold star on their book than connect with me emotionally. You’re allowed to make a bit of a mess. You can’t wage a war on drugs, terror, adverbs, cliché, you know… anything like that.

Here’s the worst one I heard recently: ‘Text is meant to be invisible for the sake of the story. It’s not supposed to stand out.’ Well I mean that’s one stance, but, like, cool man, let’s use language but have absolutely no fun doing so. Wouldn’t you love me to sound the same as you and all the other unanimously agreed-upon good writers who use the same five hundred words and no more to write about everything? Who think good writing is personifying emotions—“Anger tore through her”; “Fear rushed into him”—rather than, I don’t know, not fucking including them at all, because, stop telling me what your characters feel? And when they feel a literary flourish come on, they use a ten-word sentence (what a stretch) in which something “tangs”? I ate Tangfastics like fifteen years ago. They were tangy. Nothing has tanged since. Things just don’t really tang. Especially as an adult. Tang tang tang tang. And now you can’t unsee it either. Oh look! So many short sentences.

I feel a pacing coming on!

Now they each get their own paragraph.

Because I don’t respect my reader’s attention span.

At all. (A sentence fragment to boot? Oh dear.)

It’s difficult not to get riled up about what is and isn’t good writing! It’s good practice to have an open mind though, because my favourite writers and I will likely commit these annoying practices where we inevitably find them necessary. I’m just giving us things to think about ;)

No matter how much prestige anyone has, no human has much authority on what is and isn’t good art. So many famous works of art, after all, were set up with that exact message in mind. Art and life itself are far too big. Writers just need to be knowledgeable and have convictions. (That being said, if someone reads thousands of short stories a year and doesn’t like yours, they might, uh, know something.)

Because there are principles that should be adhered to if there is not a good reason to deviate from them, but they are just that: principles, not rules.

Original prose, by definition, is unconventional.

Here are some pics of me and other folk at theTwisted50 book +...

Me with Zoe Trope, villain of my award-winning story (see my hand :D), “The Audition Altar”! She called me a “twisted bugger.” :P


Me with Cristina Palmer-Romero, whom you might recall listening to on the Losing the Plot podcast!


Husband Juan, me, Dad Charlie :)

Here are some pics of me and other folk at the
Twisted50 book + audiobook launch party in London!

It was at the Cinema Museum in Elephant &
Castle, and featured an awards ceremony, many of the book’s authors (of which I
was one!) and even some of the characters from the stories themselves!

I was thrilled to meet Zoe Trope, villain of my
story “The Audition Altar.” She went around the room signing up guests for Sexy
Sofa—I hope there were few takers!

You can find out more about Twisted50 and other
projects run by Create50 by going to www.create50.com. If you’re a reader,
there will be many events for you to attend and great books for you to read; if
you’re a writer, maybe you’ll be next to meet your character!

Best of the LitMags

I read a lot of literary magazines these days. Here are the best stories I have read of late and where to find them!

Mediocre Company - Michael Seymour Blake [Flapperhouse]

The Mark Of Cain - Roxane Gay. [Elle]

The Lights Remain - Alison Moore [Short Fiction]

Calved - Sam J. Miller [Asimov’s]

A Series of Steaks - Vina Jie-Min Prasad — [Clarkesworld}

We Are the Ululating Tzatziki - Matthew Lee [Space Squid]

Silent Hill - Ras Mashramani [Pank]

Doppelgänger - S S Haque [Stockholm Review of Literature]

New Losing the Plot: Interview with Arthur Graham!

This episode’s guest is Arthur Graham! We chat about the life of a writer, the art of wooing with art, then predict how we’re going to die.

Arthur is the author most recently of “i wrote a poem about you”, his debut poetry collection, also “Tanuki Tango Overdrive” and a whole collection of zines with hilarious titles that you can find out more about on his Goodreads page.

- He is the editor-in-chief of “Horror Sleaze Trash Quarterly”, an anthology of poetry.

- You can support him on Patreon.

- Or you can email him at arthur.graham.pub [at] gmail [dot] com to subscribe to his latest updates or buy copies of his books directly.

If you’re a reader, writer or person with something to say and want us to lose the plot together, just get in touch at losingtheplotpodcast [at] gmail [dot] com and let’s set something up! I look forward to it!!

Bettering yourself, part 12: is bettering yourself manipulative?

It seems manipulative to consciously act to improve people’s perception of you. Well, that’s the simple version: in everything we do I think there is partly a narcissistic motivation, but the fact of its existence does not nullify the benevolence of the action the (partly narcissistic) motivation effects. Nothing is entirely something, you know? And the majority of the situations in which you can use the behaviours and actions outlined are going to happen naturally anyway, so why not use them to your advantage and the advantage of others? Those advantages aren’t always mutually exclusive.

Here’s something I learned only last year: if you are living life properly, something will make you uncomfortable every day. This is my way of saying “Life begins outside your comfort zone”—because I don’t believe that at all. I spent 99% of my time in my comfort zone. It has a duvet, pyjamas, and an enormous TV. Trust me: it’s life. It might even be life at its best! But in the interest of committing to bettering yourself every day, you will have an application to send, a conversation to have, a phone call to make, an awkward thing to request, a need to make yourself vulnerable.

This, I reckon, is what people mean when they say “Do something every day that scares you.” I think an addendum to that is, “then feel stupid that you put it off so long for being scared of it, because it wasn’t that bad, was it?”

Day to day reality, more often than not, pales in comparison to the horrors of our imaginations. I think unfortunately that means that the joys of reality, more often than not, pale in comparison to how we imagine they will feel. But I won’t let that be an excuse for your stasis: you’re still here, and what’s important is that life is (again, more often than not) better when you do the thing than when you don’t. So you have to do the thing.

So again, if any of this sounds manipulative, well, the opposite, or nothing, sounds just as manipulative, if you think about it. By living in the world we are attempting, to various degrees, to manipulate things to our own ends—either for our personal benefit or to exact changes we have evaluated that the world needs. And what could be better than our own evaluation of the world? Even although we’re so underconfident and self-conscious ahaha. Being a human is weird.

Well, no matter how good your evaluation of reality, your evaluation is the only one you have, so you have to use it for hat reason. So if you agree that to live is to manipulate to various degrees, I would say the tips in the previous posts are some of the most utilitarian methods of manipulation available to us.

Try them out and let me know how it goes, because the world is starved of the above. Imagine, for example, how many steps you would have to go through to complete my request? Would have to read most of this mega-post (not everyone), maybe like it so I know you read it (not everyone), follow the advice (almost no one), observe its effects (hello?), report those back to me (anyone?)

It’s the 10% success rate, 90% no response thing, if that. Well actually, looking at Duotrope, my short story submission acceptance rate is just over 7%, and there’s a little message that congratulates me for being above average! But in life in general, just because there is no formal rejection, doesn’t mean the rejection isn’t there. Rejection in writing is just a more explicit demonstration of something that is happening in the world all around us all the time. But that doesn’t mean “Don’t do anything.” In fact, story rejections have trained my perception of the world at large, and even if we don’t get what we set out to achieve, there are almost always hidden goals we hadn’t anticipated that may well bring us closer to things we didn’t even know we wanted, or that were even available to us. And that’s much cooler!

People drop out of the race way easier than you’d think, in almost any arena in life. It’s way easier to rise to the top than it looks. There is a lot of competition, but is there a lot of serious competition? Not really.

In all aspects of life, it pays for us and for others to get noticed and be persistent.

Consider this my fulfilment of tip #8 :)

Bettering yourself, part 11: is it worth it?

These are ways to get recognised and have people think more highly of you. But the epidemic of low self-esteem and the tendency to over-analyse the self to excess still persists. That means that if you use these tips, and people start to notice, they may well flock to you with their own needs or offences.

See, I’ve given you the previous tips assuming that you are just an average person who could start focusing their behaviour in a few new directions if you hadn’t thought of doing them yet. But the people in your vicinity won’t like change, I reckon. They won’t enjoy the idea that you are bettering yourself, because again, what does that mean about them? How could your behaviour possibly, slightly tangibly reflect upon them? Well, in their universe, that’s all it means in most instances.

So what’s the result? A few things: people feel guilty around you (Fuck ‘em! Let ‘em) and they may also ask you to do more stuff.

I suppose if you raise your standards, and create higher expectations of yourself, others do the same, holding you to a higher standard, increasing their expectations of you.

The fact that you are doing stuff and being positive is not a reflection of your average-Joe new-direction but is, to the, uh, poorly adjusted(?), evidence that in fact you are simply more of a capable person than the average-Joe, which means you should probably do more stuff than the rest of us since ‘Life doesn’t seem to affect you as much as it does me, and since you’re just so inherently good at stuff—no, it isn’t that you have the same standard worries as me and make an effort to discount them; you simply don’t have them, clearly, because if you had them, you wouldn’t do more stuff. Only I am allowed to vacillate back and forth in terms of my opinions, my energy levels, my motivation. You have just one setting, in my mind, and it’s higher than mine. So do more stuff! Do stuff for me! Hey: why aren’t you your usual, productive self today? You’ve normally got a smile on your face. Today no smile. Did the elastic cords in your mouth snap or something? See, I’ve got these muscles in my face that allow me to manipulate my mouth into a variety of expressions, and those expressions are representative of moods created by the flow of various neurotransmitters in complicated structures inside this thing called a brain that I have, but you? I think I saw you on Sesame Street teaching kids about the letter F or some shit.’

You remember that one from school? ‘You’re normally so funny. What’s up with you?’ Not like “Can I help” but “perform that one role you have in my life, minion, because I’m the protagonist today and forever, motherfucker!”

Careful what you wish for. More attention means more expectations and a bigger proportion of people who have a weaker and weaker impression of who you are, in inverse proportion to their proximity to you.

Once you become even slightly more in demand, you’ll notice, and your brain will do that thing where it quickly resets your surroundings to normality, and now not only do you feel more or less the same, but you have even further to fall! Which means you’ll start complaining again no matter how nice your stuff is. I think this is why people say they don’t like fame, or they’re rather they hadn’t won the lottery. As I mentioned in a recent book review, I read this psychology paper recently about how the children of rich people are mostly raised by maids, don’t learn the value of money or achievements, are raised to feel guilty about their wealth, like a type of original sin, and often have trouble finding a sympathetic therapist, since their problem is ‘a problem everyone would want.’

Our minds bring everything back to baseline, and you’ll probably feel just as happy about your circumstances after doing the thing as before. But again: you might think that attempting to be invisible was a better option for your day-to-day life than this bullshit, but, hey: you might as well find out either way, right?

Bettering yourself, part 10: following good advice

I have a theory that as much as people talk about what needs done, they don’t really do anything they don’t want to. Similarly, I don’t think people like to take advice because they’re incensed that they didn’t think of the solution first. They must not be perfect! Oh no. I do this a lot.

That goes back to the exceptionally yet necessarily arrogant wiring of our brains. I know one person who follows advice (it’s not me), and everyone else just follows by example: they see someone doing something they would like to do and they copy it. If someone’s doing something better than you, well, you so greatly observed what it was they did and copied it! So, everyone having different skillsets and all, if you think about it, you’re just as great as them! I’m kidding. Though you might be just as great as them if you take their advice, adopt the good practice, but certainly not if you don’t adopt it because you’re upset that you didn’t think of it first.

Advice is taken so infrequently that when I give advice and it’s taken, sometimes I think I must be filled with such exceptionally good advice that my advice is the only advice that gets followed, and have a tendency to see whoever took my advice as some sort of apprentice of mine, rather than someone who might impart equally good advice to me, just in a different situation. So if you take advice, great, but also  be aware of weirdos like me and make sure we don’t make you regret it ahaha.

Interview with Pamita Rao

New Losing the Plot! I chat with Pamita Rao about her debut fantasy novel, “Gates of Heaven”, pick up some marketing tips and gasp in awe at the insane amount of upcoming books she’s about to release.

Make sure you can say you discovered her first! She’s “Pamita Rao Author” on Facebook, @PamitaRao on Twitter, and you can also use pamitarao.com to get a copy of “Gates of Heaven” while it’s still free!

If you’re a reader, writer or person with something to say and want us to lose the plot together, just get in touch at losingtheplotpodcast [at] gmail [dot] com and let’s set something up! I look forward to it!!

Bettering yourself, part 8 + 9: supporting lesser known artists, bettering other people

Okay, this example is of course closer to my heart, but: support an indie writer. I swear: all you need to do is like a tweet of theirs and they’ll be like ‘WHO IS THIS MAJESTIC—‘

There are fewer people less appreciated in this day and age. They have chosen a relatively unpopular creative medium which they use, without solicitation, to try and add to various canons. The fuck, right? I’m not saying they deserve more appreciation necessarily but it’s definitely true that they don’t have a lot in general, and those who do show their appreciation are bound to their writers—their writers—with hoops of steel.

Imagine how most of them feel, if you agree with the typical behaviours I outlined in part 7. They overcame the fear of doing something, which already puts them in the minority, sure, but they’re expecting prizes and recognition and shit and many of them haven’t learned how to react to the response if it is a resounding silence. The majority of indie authors feel underappreciated but also that voicing this lack of appreciation would appear unprofessional.

See if you discovered them—without their introduction—bought one of their books—without them asking you to, or before they even had the chance to email you a free copy—and reviewed it—again without them asking you to—and sent them that review—without them knowing you’d done it beforehand? Do you understand how in the minority that would put you? Because what could be a surer sign of their incipient success than you, the seed they didn’t even have to plant in the hopes that it would sprout? You planted yourself and sprouted! That’s the DREAM! And If you help people realise their dreams, I swear: they’ll go to town on your junk so fast you wouldn’t believe it.

So, to that point, help better other people. If you really, really have to see it this way, the recognition it would afford you for doing this would be so easily obtainable because so few people can be bothered.

Although, also? People enjoy it a bit too much if you help them too much. That might become your role pretty quick. So for your own sake, I would even advise you not to do it too much. Win win!