Writer’s block morphs and changes

Yesterday, I had an excellent day of writing. Becky and I monopolized a couch in the coffee shop from eleven am to four-thirty pm. I didn’t write every single second of that time, but I did get into a groove and managed to pump out over 1,500 words. While I was writing away, I noticed something interesting.

I was chatting with Rachel in the background. I would write my story while waiting for her to respond to whatever I’d said last. I’d made writing the time-passing activity, instead of phone games, or Netflix. It was the most freeing attitude shift: instead of using chatting as a distraction from writing, they existed non-competitively and non-stressfully, side by side. And having five hours of friendly relations with my book has, for the time being at least, altered my overall feelings towards it. Instead of feeling overwhelmed with the enormity of it, or frustrated by its inscrutability, now I feel affection with it, like we’re friends who are going to get together to do something later.

In the past I’ve written blog posts that assert theories on how to overcome writer’s block. Those blogs were correct, for me, at that time. I didn’t anticipate—didn’t understand—that the rules could and would change. I don’t think that I've seen this expressed as conventional wisdom in the multitude of writing blogs I follow. Maybe it’s because it’s self-evident to most, but it was a surprise to me. It was like having the whole floor jerked out from under me when my old tricks didn’t work anymore.

Now that I understand that the Inhibitor is an adapting creature, moving to choke off the little shoots of inspiration that manage to wind their roots through the joints in its protective carapace, I feel slightly more prepared to keep it in perspective. But (and this is an advanced philosophical realization, don’t try this at home), I realize that even this feeling of being properly armed is going to leech out too. It’s a constant growing rumble. The only way to turn down the volume is to keep trying, trying, trying. And be kind to myself.

The Inhibitor is a master of disguise. It makes itself look like inspiration to do other creative projects (my personal favorite); exhaustion or sleepiness; and when all else fails, it just starts sounding alarm bells. They are sometimes articulate, "You will never get it right! You might as well not try! You will never get it right!" or "It’s no fucking fun! Why are you even doing this! Don’t you have something better to do!" Sometimes it’s inarticulate, but I can make the screaming shut up by walking away from the writing. If I get too close to it, it keeps getting louder. And sure, there are some days when the alarm never would shut up, no matter how hard I tried; but I suspect that, most of the time, if I just pushed through it, it would eventually fade away.

It is pretty frustrating and exhausting to have to keep switching up techniques for getting around the Inhibitor. It’s not like it publishes a handbook; and I suppose if it did it probably wouldn’t include ways to disable it. You just have to keep trying different things, again and again. And sometimes, you have to keep trying things that don’t work that well, if you can’t think of anything else. It’s really not surprising that it can have so much power over you.

Anyway, happy rambling is me. More work on snails art today, followed by more writing (I hope). Happy writing!

Word count: 8,747 (∫)

Progress is being made and GenreCon tomorrow!

On Wednesday, I had a writing date with Becky, and words came with me. That was pretty cool. A lot of the time on writing dates, or when I sit down to write during the day, I’ll spend a long time rereading. Or researching. Or … heh, blogging. Usually it’s writing-adjacent, but still quantifiably avoidance behavior, and almost always entirely fear-based. Not sure where I’m going from here. Not sure if I’m going to be able to pull it off. Not sure I’m doing it right, at all. Not sure if I’m going to offend, or be ignorant. But on Wednesday, after I got my computer plugged in, my chai and danish into my facehole, and my shoes off, the words just came.

It’s a good feeling, when it happens.

The unfortunate (maybe? Hopefully not) part is that I got to a transition point of the story just as we were wrapping up. That means two things: I got to a stopping place (which means that starting again isn’t as easy as I’d like it to be), and the story is about to go in a new direction. Which reboots the whole “am I doing it wrong” train of thought. Especially since it’s going to go places this story hasn’t yet gone, in any of the other 2.25 drafts. I used to write ghost / horror stories back in high school, but Cassidy has never treaded those corridors, and I’ve worn down such a groove with Cassidy that trying to bump her into that territory is proving… quite difficult. So, one tiny baby step at a time.

Tomorrow is GenreCon, a writer’s conference in Golden, Colorado. I’m really nervous. Not only have I never been to a writing conference, I’ve never been to any cons, ever. Unless the Renaissance Festival counts, cause from what I’ve heard about cons they seem kinda similar. But in my mind, at least, writing cons are different from, say, comic cons or anime cons or PAX. Maybe because it’s less fan-based? I don’t know. Anyway, if I bring the first three pages of my story, there’s a chance they’ll get read and critiqued. I think I’m going to do it, because what could it hurt? But I know it’s the equivalent of a first draft again, quality-wise, so I’m a bit embarrassed of it. I know that it’s almost certainly going to change, that this isn’t as polished and squeaky as it could be. But, as Cassidy would think, “nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

On Monday, I shall regale you with the epic stories of GenreCon and how I took the writing world by storm. Until then!

Word count: 6,494 (ᥞ)

Scared of my feelings

As I’ve been making (slow, slow) progress through my book, I’ve realized something that isn’t very encouraging. I’m wondering if it’s normal for other writers, or if it’s indicative of my feelings for my book.

I get really excited when I’m thinking about the story, the twists and turns, and the way the pieces fit together. I enjoy thinking about it. But when it comes time to actually write it? It all drains away. It feels dry and uninteresting, and my overwhelming feeling is that the book is going to be “nothing special,” or possibly just a giant waste of time.

I don’t want to listen to that voice, for obvious reasons. I have ideas for other stories, and I haven’t yet tried to write them, so I can’t say whether or not I have more enthusiasm for writing something else. I really, really want to finish this book before moving on to another project, so I probably won’t be receptive to “just write something different for a little while” advice. Cassidy is my baby and there are so many things I want to say with this story. I just wish the stream of good feels didn’t dry up as soon as I start trying to put words on “paper.”

My apprehensions aside, I have been writing. I got Scrivener for Christmas and I’ve been trying out the “write scenes in separate files” technique that so many people talk about. Historically, I haven’t really thought in “scenes,” but more in progression of events. Trying it this way is definitely helping me understand where scenes are delineated in my writing, and that really helps me understand the flow of tension. Because if each scene needs to be a book-in-miniature, with rising- and falling-action and a climax, then I think it helps you get a feel for if the scene is doing what it is supposed to, and if it’s necessary to the story.

Tangent: just because it has the three ingredients, doesn’t mean each of these climaxes need to be dramatic and extreme. They just need to be identifiable.

Well, that’s all for now, folks.

Word count: 4,513 (ᆡ) (NaNo in May is... not. But at least it got me writing!!)

Writing: when it rains, it drizzles pathetically

In my continuing commitment to blogging more, I am blogging today! Observe. They’re gonna be short for a while, while I get back into the swing of posting.

Yesterday, though I seemed to be trying my hardest to avoid it, I actually managed to write over 1,700 words. It sorta feels like, even when I’m writing, I’m not making any progress. I am, though. Right now, it feels like the book is going to be incredibly short. I have no sense of pacing with this version. That’s okay. It truly is a new “first” draft. I’m in no hurry (obviously).

That being said, yesterday I was thinking about my book and was suddenly overcome with a realization. It’s an obvious thing, nothing I didn’t know intellectually, but it sorta came home to me emotionally: This book doesn’t exist. It’s not out there, leaking through me onto the page. It has no rights. I’m not violating it by not writing it. It will never exist if I don’t write it. It felt both liberating and terrifying. It’s a big responsibility… a bigger responsibility than caring for plants, but probably a smaller responsibility than caring for animals.

But yeah. Your book doesn’t exist if you don’t write it. No one’s going to write it after you decide you don’t want to; it’s just going to never exist. Is that okay with you? Or would you rather just write the damn thing and be done with it? I know which side I come down on.

Because I said I'd blog more

So far, NaNo in May has been 100% unsuccessful. Naps struck me both Monday and Tuesday. Today I'm antsy and feel like I can't make my brain sit still, so I've written 54 words. Of course, my total is 2,328 so at least I'm not at the very beginning, but I do have mighty catching up to do. Maybe over the weekend. And just because I haven't written doesn't mean I wasn't productive. I worked on art resources for the P&C game my friends and I are percolating, and did some chores, and handled some money matters… not wasted time for the most part, but I still feel kinda irresponsible. Plus there are a couple of things that are in my to-do list that I'm dreading and thus haven't done: phone calls, obviously.

Six months ago I scheduled a Neurology appointment for April 21^st, which (unbeknownst to me at the time) was the same date as the Greeley Jazz festival that I go to every year. I had to cancel my appointment and have requested a new one via the website, twice. But I have heard nothing back, so I have to call them, ugh. Also my insurance decided to stop covering Adderall, which is straight crazy, so… another phone call. Both of these are relatively urgent, and I need to do them, so obviously I haven't.

On the upside, I'm covered in kittens (who have had nearly-immaculate litter box etiquette for a change!), which is probably the best thing ever. Today was a great day, I went for a long drive in the afternoon that unfortunately coincided with rush hour, but it was gorgeous and warm and beautiful. The weather went, in the course of 3 days, from white-out blizzard to have-to-open-the-windows warm, and I'm loving that. I want to make the most of the long days. Days are getting longer until the middle of June, and I want to make sure I squeeze out every last drop of sun! I should swim this year. Swimming is good.

Well, that's all I've got for now. Ciao word nerds!

The Inhibitor

I believe I have a piece of hardware installed in my brain. It’s called the Inhibitor. It plugs in between my want-tos and my can-dos, and effectively shorts the circuit with overwhelming gibber signal, mostly consisting of “but that would require you to…” and yawns. I’m not unique in this way. It seems that every writer (or otherwise creative person) is asking for advice on how to bypass their inhibitor. I’ve gotten sick of whining about it. But sometimes, it feels like a very physical thing.

And then, of course, there are the have-tos. From time to time, the have-tos are chores or errands, but the largest number of have-tos are literal necessities. Going to the bathroom, eating food, sleeping, that sort of thing. When my Inhibitor starts to fail, the have-tos are the redundant fail-safe. And the have-tos are hard to argue with. They seem to eat up my days.

Right now I have a conundrum. I’m finished with my have-tos. It’s barely 9am. I’ve bathed, eaten breakfast, checked the whole internet, and essentially run out of reasonable distractions. There are so many creative endeavors I’ve been dying to do, and inspired to do, and motivated to do… when I’m unable to do them, of course. Now that I have no have-tos between me and my goals, the Inhibitor is working overtime. “But you have three unfinished Christmas stockings to do! Those count as creative!” … true, but I’ve watched so much Netflix in the last couple of months that I’m about to run out of shows. Like, all shows. It’s getting boring. “You’re really sleepy! You know you are. Go lie down.” I’m never not sleepy. If I let that affect my activities, I’d never do anything. “You know you’re not supposed to force it…” Force it, sure, but I should really at least give myself a chance to do these creative things I’m so excited about.

I’ve had writing dates with my writer friends the last few weeks. On each of these, I’ve had some excuse not to write. The first one, I spent the time moving Cassidy into Scrivener, so at least it was tangentially related. The next time, I was writing emails to people. It was actually important, don’t get me wrong, but I sometimes feel so defeated. I’d really like to write with my girls, because it seems like the only time I actually get into it.

Well, at any rate, it seems like maybe my Inhibitor has leashed my blog into its dark service. I’ma cut that bitch out, for today anyway.

TTFN dear readers!

New Year, same resolutions

Hello faithful readers,

I haven’t been posting much recently. This is primarily because I have nothing at all to say. Holidays are crazy for me as much as for anyone else, and I have made very little progress on my book. In the month of December, I participated in Advent of Code, a daily code puzzle for programmers of all levels. I got considerably better at Java, doing these puzzles. So, that made me happy. But I did use it as an excuse to not write.

There’s always one of those, isn’t there?

To be fair, I have also been exhausted nearly all the time. Right now, the screen is swimming in front of my eyes. I have to trust that I’m not typing gobbledygook because I tend to be a fairly good typist.

My idea for Cassidy keeps evolving, in good ways. I’m excited because it seems like it’s not evolving its main construction anymore, just minor details. It’s all good stuff.

Last week I had a dream I was writing. I was super proud of myself for writing, for once. I was very close to the surface, coming up, and I remember thinking, “oh, I’m not actually writing. I’m dreaming about writing. But at least I’m thinking about writing.” Then I actually woke up and realized the thing I was dreaming about writing… wasn’t my story. It was something about a cat. I was very disappointed. But it all evened out because I ended up forgetting everything that I’d been trying to retain, anyway.

So, that’s pretty much what I have to show for the last month: a dream about writing about a cat.

No, no, hold your applause.

I’m not optimistic about finishing Cassidy this month. But I’m going try, regardless. No more excuses! Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try. (Timely Star Wars Quote™.)

I will report back at regular intervals. Stay tuned.

I'm losing it.

I’ve written dribs and drabs. I’ve constructed sentences that I’m proud of. For the most part, I’ve made a thing that I’m happy with. The third try at Cassidy is the closest yet to what I started out envisioning. I’m not bored, or tired, or distracted.

What am I, then? Why is it that as I get nearer to being good I get farther from wanting to continue it?

I have a long reading list. Several books checked out from the library, and they’re ebooks, so when they expire they just... go away. I want to read them, but I’m currently reading a much longer, much heavier sci-fi book that is also commanding all of my love and interest.

After I finished Becky’s feedback letter, I had a strong feeling of liberation. Finally, I could work on my own writing! Something changed during the long break wherein I didn’t think much about Cassidy, so that when I came back to it, it wasn’t at all onorous. I had somehow managed to recapture the feeling of writing for myself, the way you do when you’re a kid and being creative is just a thing you do, no matter how anyone reacts. I wrote 2,542 words, in quick succession. Everything felt like an increase in freedom, rather than a decrease. But then, it sorta... petered out.

I’ve had a lot of things happen in my personal life: pets adjacent to me dying, foster kittens aging out, and my own personal pets having medical problems. I’ve had a lot on my plate, and a severe deficit of energy to devote to anything that isn’t self-care. The remembered feeling of goodness hasn’t been enough to bring back my desire to write. But what’s worse: I also haven’t really felt bad about that fact.

The downside to dry spells is that gnawing feeling of guilt of a job left unfinished. It brings me back, again and again, because my characters get antsy and don’t want to be ignored. But this time... I’ve felt nothing. I want that nasty guilt. I want to feel compelled to go back. And right now, I don’t.

So I’m fishing in my pool of readers. What can I do to get reinvigorated? How can I make Cassidy matter again? I want to want to. Gimme your magic writing sparkles.

Word count: 5,820 (ᚼ)

Learning new things =)

In the past, I have had bouts of feeling... extremely static. Like I have itchy feet—I don’t know what I want to do, but I know I want to stop doing nothing! These bouts can be really frustrating because most of the time, I’m not doing nothing. I’m just doing more of the same. I can’t put my finger on what I want to do; most things sound really unappetizing. What do I want‽ I yell at myself.

Finally, after much mental wiggling, I figured it out.

When I feel like that, I’m longing to learn something new. Something creative, preferably. A new craft, a new skill, a new technique. My brain is tired and wants to stretch its atrophied muscles.

In the spirit of learning new things, I’ve been going through the Python Codecademy course to learn how to program. I’m 90% of the way through it, apparently, and it’s come... fairly easy to me, so far, but the farther I get the more respect and awe I have for people who got a degree in this nonsense. You have to tie your brain up in corkscrew-knots to think through the logic, and once you have something that works, your brain unwinds and you don’t understand what you just did. But hey, it works, don’t look at it too closely!

I have been wanting to learn to program for a long time now. I learned PHP well enough to automate math problems, which was what I wanted it to do. But since I’ve been unemployed and struggling with being functional, there is a project that is near and dear to my heart that none of my code-savvy friends have the time or bandwidth to do for me: An Android app.

In its conception, Next is a to-do list, but it’s much more than that to me. It would be a time- and energy-management tool. It would help me keep things the right “size.” It would help me reclaim my agency.

Okay, I’ll go through why it would be special. (See, I’m having a hard time figuring out where to start, haha!)

1. User makes a list of what they need to do.
   1. User makes a short-term to-do list.
   2. User makes a long-term to-do list.
2. User arranges things in priority-order.
   1. User organizes things in terms of what is most important to them to get done.
   2. User organizes things in order of what has the closest deadline.
3. If there are explicit deadlines for a task, user assigns those deadlines.
   1. This can be used for appointments, too.
4. User customizes settings.
   1. What kind of encouragement does the user want to receive?
      1. Text messages, notifications, social media, calendar events.
      2. Message a friend/SO/family member to ask them to send encouragement.
   2. How frequently do they want to be “encouraged”?
   3. What escalation of encouragement do they want?
      1. User-written affirmations / encouraging messages.
      2. Developer-written affirmations / encouraging messages.
   4. What kind of recognition does the user want for completing a task?
      1. None, congratulatory message, social media integration.
   5. Choose the level of urgency for each item on to-do list.
      1. One task may require frequent, escalating encouragements, while another may require a more low-level reminder schedule.
   6. Specify down-time.
      1. After a specified time of day, notifications go away, encouragement messages stop, and the pressure is off.
5. When settings are finished, list is “finalized.”
   1. The list becomes a little obfuscated; at this point the user is passively discouraged from altering it.
6. The next thing on the list becomes a notification in the user’s notification bar.
   1. The notification cannot be swiped away; the user must consciously deactivate Next or complete their to-do list to vacate their notification bar.
   2. The notification can be interacted with via “snooze” or “mark as complete” buttons attached to the notification.
      1. “Snooze” will move the item in question below the subsequent item on the list.

Uh, so, that’s it in a nutshell. It’s enforced baby-stepping, but not as baby is it could be, which is a little unfortunate, but I suppose a user could get that kind of granularity by having user-written “encouragements” that read “Stand up,” then 30 seconds later, “Put on your shoes,” etc. It will hopefully stop a to-do list from looking overwhelming, because, well, you only have one thing to do!

But that kind of integration is the sort of thing I’m not going to be able to jump right into, not least because programming for mobile is kindof a bitch. Right now I’m a little bit beyond “Hello World” and about aeons before making a duck that won’t run into the side of the pool. (A digital duck, people. I’m not God, or a mother duck. Geez.)

And, if you were going to ask, yes, this is avoidance behavior. Shut up.

How about you, gentle readers? are you learning anything new? Let me know in the comments. Ciao for now!

Word count: 3,776 (ເ)

Tips for overcoming writers' paralysis and cultivating enthusiasm for your writing

Long title is long!

I was at the gym yesterday and I was finishing up my stretches. After stretches, I do ab workout—situps, crunches, leg-lifts, or jackknifes, depending on the day. Yesterday was jackknifes. After that, weights, then a half-hour of cardio. And I was lying on my back, looking at the wasp nest in the highest tippy-top of the cathedral-vaulted ceiling and dreading every single step of it with my whole self.

I probably don’t need to tell you, but dread is one of those ingredients in a workout (or any other chore) that really dominates the flavor and ruins the dish.

So I thought to myself, “Self, stop it! Why do you dread this so hard? You know it exactly. You have done it so many times you could do it in your sleep. Dreading it only makes it take longer; and when that’s not true, it sure makes it seem to take longer!”

“But, Self,” I protested, “What should I do to dispel this awful funk? You make it sound easy. I assure you, it is not.”

“Fear not, Self,” I laughed, “There is a solution! Behold!” I flourished my cape. “When you started coming to the gym, you were infused with feelings of accomplishment, pride, and self-power. These feelings have waned as the gym routine has become mundane, but in truth, the fact that the gym routine has lasted long enough to become mundane is an indication of exactly how accomplished, proud, and powerful you should feel!

“In short, do not focus on the mundanity, the sloggishness. Focus on the things that made you start coming in the first place! The way it draws into focus the ways in which your body is succeeding at being strong, beautiful, bendy—what have you. After all, what are you anxious for? Have you elsewhere to be? I think not. Now is your time. Enjoy it.”

Well, it got me through the rest of the workout, and I realized that the same technique can be applied to most things we dread. Staring at the blank page, fingers poised over the keyboard, thinking, “I know I was gonna say something… what was it again?” we have started looking at our writing as an obligation, a chore. What if we spent a few minutes right before we start writing to remember exactly why we write? If we can recapture the feeling of the joy of creation, the freedom of crafting a world to our own specifications, the way it used to be an escape rather than a prison, then writing will be a breeze.

Yesterday, after my workout, I was victim to a sustained headache and stomach ache and did not return to the world of creation, but I’m going to try out this technique today and see if it works as well for writing as it did for finishing my gym routine. Happy writing, everyone!

Word count: 2,778 (૚)

I'm gonna talk about it now.

I promised myself when I started this blog that it was not going to become mopey mopey Emoville. So I’m writing this post in the spirit of grabbing my demon by its horns and showing it to the world. Maybe doing that will help me fight it. Or maybe it’ll just get me a little leeway with my gentle readers when I don’t blog every single M/W/F or write as many words as I should.

I’ve mentioned my fatigue and my MS before. I’ve tried to downplay it, or to only give it a glancing blow on my way to more upbeat things. But I think the result of that is to make myself look like I’m failing to achieve (or even approach) my goals for… no reason. And I don’t like giving it power over me, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t already have it.

Fatigue is a lot like depression. So much so that I don’t think I can safely say I don’t have a certain amount of depression. Fatigue is different from being tired. There are days when I feel like I have energy; I have no desire to nap, but I simply cannot bring myself to do anything productive, be it chores, errands, or writing. For chores, even the first, smallest baby step seems like a mountain, or a sheer rock face. For writing, I open my document and I read the last thing I wrote and I put my fingers on the keyboard, and then… nothing comes. I do what they tell you to do: I write nonsense or I write journal-style just to get the words flowing, but the heart isn’t beating. I can squeeze out a few drops but that doesn’t make it flow.

Fatigue is present in most people with MS even if they have no neurological symptoms or lesions, like me. For me, fatigue is crippling. I fail to fulfill social and familial obligations. I have to cancel activities that I was really looking forward to. Almost everything I do, I have to force myself to do. Except on days when that’s not true. Some days, I feel almost normal. I can do three or four whole things (or, alternatively, write a couple of thousand words) before crawling into a deep dark hole. If I’m not careful, I can spend all the energy that I have that day and overspend into the next day’s energy, leaving me twice as wrecked as I would otherwise be.

And those days are almost worse than the others, because they make me feel like I’m failing all the rest of the time.

I have a problem moderating myself, separate from MS. As long as I can remember, I’ve been inclined to follow rules that I set for myself as though they were set in stone. I think that’s because I went through a phase where having no rules resulted in me failing out of college. So, if I “break the rules,” I have no safety net. I eat a bag of Doritos, drink a 2-liter of Mountain Dew, and play Don’t Starve while Law & Order: SVU plays in the background. My therapist tells me that sometimes I can’t be productive, because, uh, I have MS. But “being kind to myself” looks, to me, a lot like breaking the rules. And the more I break the rules, the easier it is, and the harder it is to “be good.” So, being kind to myself may actually result in me losing all the good habits I’ve made over the past eight years. Can you blame me for getting mad at myself for backsliding? There are only so many things I’m proud of—I’m not going to forgive myself for losing all of them.

So, I have no energy. So I turn into a person-sized slug on the couch, incapable of doing anything else. So I get mad at myself for slugging. And that sucks more energy out of me, because (just like kids whose parents say “no” more than “yes” end up feeling like they can’t do things,) if I don’t have my own support, I’m not going to feel empowered to accomplish anything. So the next day I have even less energy. So I can’t write, or do anything else. So I get mad at myself. At a certain point, I can’t even sleep anymore, I’m too busy being pissed at myself. So, guess what? No energy. And on and on it goes.

It’s bad enough knowing that I could never support myself anymore. If Branden were to upgrade to a newer model, I’d be up a creek. It feels like I was robbed, since I was aimed at a master’s degree in architecture when I had to admit defeat to the fatigue and confusion and the lack of balance, sensation, and coordination—like the weeping angels touched me, my potential was stolen from me, and I am doomed to whatever scraps I can get now, from my tiny cage lined with wood chips. But I feel like my brain is my enemy. And when your brain is your enemy, what could an ally possibly offer?

I am trying to learn brainhax to trick myself into moderation. Make good habits of self-regulation. But when even that feels mountainous and unattainable… I feel like I’m in Inception, just falling deeper and deeper into limbo.

So… that’s where I’ve been for the last few weeks. Please stay with me. I can’t do this alone.

New and unanticipated difficulties, hooray!

I was so excited to start writing narrative. My outline was complete and finally everything made sense: all the clues pointed in all the right directions, and I’m no longer relying on Cassidy’s biases and lack of experience to create tension where there really isn’t any. I think—I really do—that this book is going to be good.

So why can’t I write it?

I think the biggest problem is that I haven’t found Cassidy’s voice yet. Exploring the feminist/sexist aspect of the story was a choice that I made from the get-go, but it’s really not fun to write the scenes, especially so early in the writing process. (Note to self: maybe I could put this scene on hold and come back to it once I’m on more secure footing?)

So, Cassidy is less inexperienced in this version. She needs to start with a good amount of confidence and authority so that when the shit hits the fan, her loss of objectivity and her feelings of being “at sea” are more powerful. There are clues gotten from interrogation, from intuition, from observation, and from hands-on investigation. (In my reading, it seems that all of these things are necessary to make the hardboiled detective who s/he is.) There is a world outside Cassidy’s investigation, and some of the people-of-interest have other shady shit going on that is unrelated to the case but will influence they way they deal with her. And, she gets to start building contacts in her new city.

But when I sit down to the keyboard, the words don’t seem to come.

Here’s the kind of stupid shit I do to avoid writing but still claim I’m “being productive”: I made an HTML version of the Google doc of my story so far. I mean, I set the page width, the font, font size, there’s a gray border around the “page,” there are page breaks and page numbers and everything. Why? I dunno. Cause. Now it’s in a format I could, theoretically, email my friends and it wouldn’t take as long to load as a Google doc. Also cause playing with CSS is fun. And it’s both easier and more technically challenging than writing. I am just so... tense about writing.

It’s super bizarre, too, because over the last few days (weeks?) I’ve really started understanding, intellectually, that I can’t “screw it up.” Text is so much kinder than any other creative medium if you make a mistake: you just hit backspace. Yes, you might end up deleting entire sentences, paragraphs, pages... or even entire drafts. But you can try, try again at virtually no cost. So why am I so freaked out?

There are no words.

But I’ve decided I’m not going to beat myself up. It really doesn’t do any good.

Word count: 1,989 (߅)

Reading complete!

I finished The Big Sleep last night. It’s a wonderful book and I’m certainly going to be reading more Raymond Chandler from now on (in fact, I have just now checked out Farewell, My Lovely from the library). He is where all the awesome hardboiled tropes come from. He warms my guts.

I feel like I am armed and armored, where before I was naked and wielded only a stick. Yes, I survived the wilderness, but I wasn’t pretty at the end.

My metaphor isn’t holding up too well. That’s okay.

I am very excited to begin writing again. Given the changes I feel are necessary to make my book not just good but great, I’m going to have to start by outlining—again. Yes, I’m starting completely over once more. But this time, I’m keeping all the same characters and they’re playing the same roles, if in different ways. This means that I will almost certainly need at least one more draft between this one and the final draft, but hey, what else am I gonna be doing? Might as well write something worth reading.

As with the first day of anything, I start out excited and quickly become overwhelmed and terrified. (Not to mention that I’m tired as balls.) My brain is trying to tell me that it’s okay to play some Don’t Starve before getting started. My brain is wrong. The metaphor for my feels about writing is, if I were to have five energetic kittens fighting each other in my lap, playing with my hair, pulling on my earrings, that’s about how focused I feel. This may be at least partially because this is actually happening to me right now. I need to put myself into an environment where I control the stimuli. It doesn’t have to be quiet but the noise and tumult should be present by my will.

I wish I had more to say about writing right now. Being at the very beginning of a new draft makes for thought storm but word drought. So I will talk about other things.

My friend and Writers’ Group cohort Becky has been participating in Twitter pitch contests, and that is most excellent! She actually has a finished book to pitch. I’m a little jealous, not gonna lie. But it’s been making me think that I could really use a community. Blogs I follow, comment on, and/or contribute to. Twitter banter. Forum friends. Self-promotion would probably be a lot easier if I felt like less of an internet spectator and more of an internet participant.

I would love to have shorter stories to share, so that people might read my work and enjoy it, and maybe long for more. I have shared a few things on deviantArt, but have never gotten any feedback. Does anyone have suggestions about where to share short fiction with a community? I’m not a writer of fanfic, though I sort of wish I were; that comes with some built-in exposure.

Later today I’m going up to the city park to sign a petition to recall all members of the Jefferson County school board, because reasons. Though I do not and will not have a child in any school district, I still believe that education is basically the most important thing when it comes to bettering one’s life, becoming a creative person, and becoming a good neighbor. Having a school board dominated by people who prioritize money and “patriotism” over quality of education will simply perpetuate the problems that exist in society today.

Anyway. I’m gonna wrap this up, I feel I may be participating in avoidance behavior at this point. Wish me luck, and happy writing, all!

Writing hygiene

As my deadline nears (thirty four hours, thirty four minutes) and the words pile up (“not as quickly as I’d like,” she thought, her forehead wrinkling with worry), I’m made to think about writing hygiene, which is a term I just made up, derived from sleep hygiene. Sleep hygiene refers to making good habits to increase your likelihood of having a good night’s sleep, such as turning off screens an hour before bedtime, going to bed at the same time every night, preceding bedtime with the same approximate routine (like brushing teeth, reading, etc) so that your body gets trained to expect sleep to follow.

Similarly, I think that having good writing hygiene would help me write more consistently. Currently, I do have a routine, but it’s not consistent enough to train me. I start whenever I want to, by checking my comics and deviantArt and Tumblr, then (allegedly) I start writing. However, Tumblr frequently segues into Facebook and even if it doesn’t, following Tumblr link chains can be an endless activity (and I’m not exaggerating). As a result, I end up being ready to start writing right around lunch time, and then I have to eat, and while I eat, I like to watch a show, which is, I know, a bottomless pit of unproductivity. Meaning, I can’t watch a show during lunch if I have any expectation of writing afterwards. But it’s a very hard thing to resist, when you’ve got nothing else occupying your eyes.

Long story short (“too late!” she cackled, rubbing her hands together gleefully), I need better writing hygiene. It is true that my comics, Tumblr and deviantArt are all inspirational to me and help me get into the headspace of writing, but Tumblr just doesn’t have any convenient early-exit points. It makes me think that maybe I should save Tumblr as a post-writing reward rather than a pre-writing requisite. In addition, I should have a set time of day that I begin this routine—and perhaps, a set time that I end it, though I hesitate to stop myself if I’m on a roll.

But if I write 2,500 words and let the spirit take me until Branden gets home, the next day I feel the letdown of not having done anything to reward my hard work, of simply jumping back into the fray and putting my raw, abused nose right back against the grindstone. I always promise myself, “if you write today, you can play Don’t Starve afterwards!” (“she does, you know,” she griped. “I’m starting to think she never planned to let me go.”) But there’s never time afterwards, and then the cycle begins again.

It’s possible that changing venues might help me with both staying on task and choosing to stop; but all of the appealing venues are ones where it’d be at least a little rude not to buy something. Branden has suggested the library, and it’s a very good idea, but the image in my head of a library includes hard plastic chairs, MDF desks, and a distinct lack of beverages. I think I’m probably mistaken in at least some of these assumptions, but, so far, laziness has won out, and I’m home-bound for writing. Primarily, I write while sitting on the floor of the unbelievably smelly room which houses three five-week-old kittens who think that me and my computer are the hottest ride in the whole park. (“Gee, I wonder why it’s so hard to get anything done,” she sneered, lighting a cigarette.) It’s how I multitask: kittens get quality Elly time and I get quality kitten time and I compose my masterpiece and Everything Is Just Great. Right?

Of course right. Or so I keep telling myself. And I could be right, it’s just a matter of discipline. So, here I sit, in Smelly Kittenville, preparing to write something that looks like Philip K Dick and Raymond Chandler had a hideous mutated Frankenstein baby. Wish me luck!

Word count: 47,372 (뤌)

Snail crawl

Well, I wrote a bunch on Monday when I was so motivated. But once I’d finished the scene, I found myself back where I was: not sure where to go or how to get there. It was disheartening. But, having a writing binge (purge?) did help me keep my boot on fear’s neck.

I realized something: I hadn’t thought through how Cassidy was actually going to solve the mystery. There are two simultaneous mysteries going on (as there should be; see this for a good guide on how to structure a story), and I had thought my way through one of the cases entirely—the one Cassidy doesn’t know she’s solving. But the case she was hired for, I hadn’t completely figured out how she’d solve it. And now that that time is basically nigh, I’m having to figure it out as I go.

Pro-tip: don’t do this. Mysteries are hard to follow when you’re reading them. They are no less so when you’re writing them.

I’m also finding that shucking things off as #ThirdDraftProblems doesn’t actually make them non-issues. For example, Cassidy’s amnesia. This draft, I’ve mostly ignored it. Sometime recently, I realized that in my efforts to make Cassidy a mostly-well-adjusted human being in spite of her amnesia, I had managed to gloss over it completely. Because of that, I’ve managed to make it seem like she didn’t care. Because of that, I haven’t built any tension relating to it, which makes releasing that tension super hard. Even if I can stick my fingers in my ears and go “lalala I totally built that tension already by now in my third draft,” I don’t know how I’ve built it, therefor I don’t know the most powerful way to release it. Le sigh.

One of my techniques during NaNoWriMo to come back and write with momentum the next day was to stop writing right in the middle of a scene. That way, I’d be excited to finish it when I came back to it. This time around, I haven’t been very good about that. Scenes feel like capsules. When I get to the end and say “now what?” I spend quite a while going “I don’t knooowwww” and despairing. I think I need to go back to the basics and review the last thing that happened in the story.

1. What did Cassidy learn?
2. What did the readers learn?
3. What changes did these discoveries cause?

If thinking about these things doesn’t set off a spark, trying to occupy Cassidy’s head and figure out what she thinks the next move is will probably also help.

Taking myself out of my normal writing environment has also helped me at least start my writing engine on a day-to-day basis. Monday, it was as simple as sitting on my porch in a reclining lawn chair for a few hours with my laptop on my lap. (It helped that it was 80° outside.) Between that, Starbucks, and the library, I definitely have options. Going out helps discourage me from playing video games, since my desired setting while playing Don’t Starve is to have a show on in the background. Being separated from my TV helps me shut off the impulse to play games mindlessly until something better comes along.

So, I am going to finish Cassidy1 in April. This is going to happen. Hopefully early April. I’m ready for my month-long break between drafts and to tackle some of those #ThirdDraftProblems we’ve all heard so much about. Wish me luck, okay?

Word count: 35,150 (襎)

But what about when writing becomes a burden?

On Wednesday, I managed to write about 1,500 words towards my story. It wasn’t torture, it didn’t hurt; I was shocked at how much I’d built it up in my head to be this extremely “difficult” thing.

But after Wednesday, the tide ebbed and I was once more stranded on the high ground of inspirationlessness. I know as well as anyone that “waiting for inspiration” isn’t a valid strategy to writing, but I’ve been feeling almost abandoned by my muses. Thinking about writing has been frustrating, and frustration has made me feel veritably glued to my couch. Not only do I not write, I also don’t do anything else I need to do. Everything seems unapproachable, unattainable, and frankly, pointless. I really wanted to give up, but I stubbornly couldn’t accept that I could walk away from my novel, which had so much promise and so much time sunk into it, and a bunch of people whose opinions I respect waiting for it.

But not being able to walk away from it felt like a chain. I was feeling worthless, which made it worse... I’m sure most of you know how this goes. Getting stuck creatively can feel a lot like depression. (Not being a mental health professional, I’m not sure when something crosses the border into depression—does sadness have to be a part of it? I wasn’t feeling sad, at least not for lengths of time. Weekends were great. I still enjoyed things. Etc.)

Last night, as I was falling asleep, my mind wandered to where I had left Cassidy... and then it wandered farther. I “wrote,” in my head, the subsequent scene. I have greased the axles of my writing wheels and today, I’m excited to write. Nonetheless, I’m going to post here what I think regarding When Writing Becomes A Burden.

Writing can feel like a burden for a variety of reasons. I think a major one is: Life Is Happening. Something major is going on in your life that’s sucking a lot of your energy and the idea of spending any of that precious resource on “frivolous” creative endeavors simply seems overwhelming. You lost a job or got a new one. You ended a relationship, or began one, or your relationship changed. You had a baby or got pregnant. You got sick or someone you care for got sick. Whatever. You are out of emotional bandwidth. In my opinion, this is the best, most legit, reason to suspend a creative endeavor. You need to take care of you. Sometimes, when whatever it is that is sucking your bandwidth resolves, you can’t pick up your project where you left off. That’s sad, but it’s a fact of life. Unless you can recapture your headspace of the time, I would say, don’t stress it. Move on to something new.

One that I’ve struggled with a lot before Cassidy came along and introduced herself, was I’d have a tiny idea fragment—a character, a setting, a one-sentence summary—that simply didn’t have enough substance to grow into a full story idea. I would have a lot of creative energy and no targeted creative outlet. It’s easy to say “when you get like that, write something, draw something, do something,” but it’s just as frustrating when you sit down and open a text document and type “I hate this why can’t I write” a hundred times. Or scribble the same noses, eyes, lips you’ve been scribbling for years. Writing or drawing with no direction doesn’t usually feel good, at least not to me. It feels futile. And it’s a little sad because, before Cassidy, I hadn’t had a fully formed creative idea in years.

Getting to the point where writing feels like a burden while you’re still in the middle of your project is the worst, though. That’s where projects die. And it’s mostly because, working on a project is like climbing a mountain. It gets really hard. It is really easy to turn back, because behind you, the mountain has flattened out. You’ve gotten bored with it, you’ve had some other ideas, you want to do something else for a while. But I firmly believe that that voice—the bored voice, the lazy voice, the frustrated, tired, distracted voice—is a defense mechanism that is no longer useful to you as a modern human, and listening to it is nothing but destructive. If you hear that voice, that’s okay. It’s impossible not to. Hear it, listen to it, and like a teenager to her parents, reject it. Say “Okay, I’m tired. I’m frustrated. I’m bored. I hear you. But I’m working on it anyway.”

That voice will fade, the more you tune it out. And if you’re working towards an end, you might have days where you delete everything you wrote. But the next day, you’ll do it better. As long as you gave it your best try, you’ll feel accomplished—much more so than if you did nothing.

So stick with it. Fill your personal library with finished projects instead of fragments. Give yourself room to take care of you, but hold yourself accountable when your fear/frustration/boredom is trying to exert power over you. You can do it. You are powerful. And remember, you make your own inspiration.

Word count: 32,710 (翆)

Don't get bogged down in word count!!

Writers' Group was yesterday, and as per usual, it was great and awesome. For once, WIP-feedback was both gratifying and greatly needed (on my part). I was feeling really stuck and couldn't figure out where I wanted (or needed) Cassidy to go. If a book is a ski hill, I felt like I was standing on the top of the mountain where the bottom of the mountain is the reveal/climax/what have you. (I realize this is the opposite of the imagery we were taught in high school. Go with it.) Once I start sliding down that hill, the descent will be fast and blurry and kept in line with only a minimum amount of control.

And I was (/am) at only ~30k words.

My initial goal for my second draft was between 75 and 80k. My first draft was almost exactly 50, it being NaNoWriMo and all. I was baffled: how could my second draft be so much shorter‽

Of course, to answer that would be begging the question. There is no proof that my second draft will be shorter than my first draft. I can’t know that until it’s finished.

Secondly, if my second draft is shorter than my first draft, there are a lot of things I’ve left out of my second draft that I intend to go back through and re-insert: for example, worldbuilding; fleshing out her “missing year”; mood setting; a few other things. Referring to things like that, I’ve come up with my own personal hashtag: #ThirdDraftProblems. I’m super douchey about it, too. I do the Jimmy Fallon hashtag gesture and everything.

But even so—even though I know I’m leaving things out—I am still feeling paralyzed because I feel like I’m zeroing in on the end too fast. And this is not a problem I should concern myself with. Why? Thanks for asking!

They say you shouldn’t include anything in your story that doesn’t contribute to the development of the plot, the world, the character, or some combination of the three, and I strongly agree. That being said, there is probably an infinite amount of things that do contribute to the story that we choose to leave out when constructing our first, or second-first, drafts. If it ends up being short, then it probably feels short, and you’re missing the opportunity to fully flesh out your character or your world or sometimes, even the plot. There are things that you can include to make everything feel more rounded and complete. For example, in my first-first draft, I had a scene where Cassidy talks to some baristas at a coffee shop which had resisted the tide of franchise coffee shops that had swept the nation. They were insufferable hipsters, which was fun to write—but more fun was realizing that, due to the nature of her memory loss, Cassidy didn’t know how coffee was made. One of the baristas made reference to ‘slingin’ bean juice.’ After that point, Cassidy assumes that coffee is, literally, coffee bean juice, and wonders how one juices a bean.

That scene didn’t have an encore in my second-first draft, but I still love it. I want to include it, if I can. I’ve even invented the café where it would take place. But I have a feeling that, this time around, it may not make it in.

Unless the story needs lengthening. Or even rearranging, or whatever.

I realized something else at Writers’ Group that I had been honestly ignorant of until then. I’d written my first-first draft with an eye to snarky humor: serious story but told with a humorous voice, like Gun, With Occasional Music. This time around, though, I haven’t been doing that nearly as much. There are funny moments, but I haven’t done nearly the number of similes that one associates with the noir genre as I did in Cassidy0.

(<Aside> I just wrote Cassidy0, or “Cassidy prime” for you non-math-nerds out there, because I got sick of saying first-first draft. From now on, first-first draft will be Cassidy0 and second-first draft will be Cassidy1. No, it’s not easier to type, but it makes me happy. So there. </Aside>)

I asked my friends, as we were nearing the end of the discussion, “So okay, is it funny?” and everyone’s face sorta fell and they looked uncertain, and I immediately went over my writing in my head and realized... it really isn’t funny. As I said before, there are individual scenes or lines that are funny, but by and large the situation isn’t funny, the dialogue isn’t funny very often, and even Cassidy’s internal monologue usually isn’t funny. That actually makes me a little sad. I like the noir humor; it’s part of why I wanted to write a noir novel to begin with. Plus, I do feel like the noir humor is part of what makes the genre what it is; without that, it’s just grit. The humor is what shines a little light into the darkness against which our noir hero battles. I mean, the very word “noir” simply means “black.” We need to lighten it up, don’t we?

I’m going to file that under #ThirdDraftProblems.

Word Count: 29,449 (猉)

I've come too far to turn back now!

I got to 1,928 words on Friday before I had to leave to Fort Collins for the book signing. (Spoilers: I finished when I got home.) When I got there, shortly after 3, I found that the line was long. Long long. Around the block... then the next block... then the block after that kind of long. In addition to that, I had neglected the rule that I’m sure was prominent on the website if I had bothered to look: I had to have pre-ordered Gaiman’s new book in order to get a signature. I think there were copies to buy on site, but by the time I got there, I had no confidence there would be any left over to buy when I got to the front of the line.

So, with a heavy heart, I called it a wash and my friends and I went to a late lunch at Coopersmith’s, which was delicious and you should definitely go there, if you have a chance. By the time we were driving back, it was rush hour and there were three separate accidents on I-25, so we took a “long” way (which was a much shorter way, in light of the traffic conditions). All in all, a very nice day—but far from relaxing.

Saturday, I spent almost the entire day cleaning the house. In this instance, when I say cleaning, I mean straightening, organizing, and neatening—not bust-out-the-cleaning-supplies sort of cleaning. And it was still all day long and totally overwhelming. By the time I went to bed, my brain had shut off hours before.

Sunday, we had yet more neatening to do, but it was the much smaller half and we were done by 2:15. Then we had Writers’ Group at 6, to which I was greatly looking forward. But I had writing to catch up on before that, so I wasn’t able to squeeze in more than forty-five minutes of low-key, relaxing “fun time.”

In addition to getting good feedback on my story and getting to give feedback on good friends’ stories (good friends’ good stories?), I also got to see my friend Kevin again for the first time in, what, two years? After Writers’ Group, Kevin, Branden and I went out to dinner at Fire On The Mountain Buffalo Wings... Om nom nom. Then home again with just enough time to fold laundry, brush teeth, have fun for a half hour and go to bed (even so, much too late).

Tl:dr; I didn’t get to fill my fun tank this weekend. Writing usually takes me two hours or longer, and catching up on feeds takes a similar amount of time on a normal day—which today is not, since I didn’t catch up on feeds at all over the weekend. So I don’t see fun in my future this week either. (I really wish that Blogger had emoji, or good image integration. Insert sad face here.)

One of my friends told me to take the day off. I really want to do that. My writing tank is so full and my fun tank is so empty, I’m rolling Willpower every few minutes not to start up Don’t Starve and scream “Fuck it!” into the void.

But I want to finish my book. I want to get the second draft done so that I can start the third draft (hopefully more of an edit and less of a complete rewrite) so that I can put some polish on it and work on getting it published. But what I am having trouble understanding right now is why people would write more than one book in their lives. Don’t they have friends and loved ones who feel their absence? Don’t they have hobbies they’re neglecting or recreational activities they miss?

I must have faith that this angst will pass. Stay the course. No one can write my book but me. I just gotta hang in there.

Word count: 21,066 (削)

Interrobang‽

This isn’t news to most people following this blog, as most people following this blog are either my own doppelgänger (Branden), follow the same nerdy sites as me, or are well-versed in their own right, but this. This bit of punctuation! I didn’t know that there was a way to type it. There’s apparently also a punctuation mark that is a backwards question mark and a forward-facing question mark that share the same dot, which is called a “love mark” and is meant to end a sentence that expresses love, like “Happy anniversary.” I wish there was a way to type that, but so far I haven’t found it. (There are also many other cool punctuation marks that mostly don’t have a way to type them. See here.)

Second super-fun thing: Neil Gaiman will be signing books at Old Firehouse Books in Fort Collins on February 6, starting at 4pm! I think I’d like to try to get there, but I don’t know if I actually will, knowing me. If I did go, I’d bring Neverwhere for him to sign. And maybe book #1 of Sandman. Is that how book-signings work?

Having just reviewed my blog post from Monday, I can say, wow, I was loopy. That’s okay, I’ve written things while loopy that I wonder why I can’t write like that while fully intact. On Monday, after my blog, I did manage to write a little more. Not a lot; only about 200 words, but better than nothing.

I’ve been reading my tumblr and checking my deviantArt feeds till now and I think—I think—that I’m going to be able to open up my writing and write! That will be excellent. I have to say, I’m looking forward to having a finished project. And that anticipation should carry me through the rewrite.

I’m starting to identify more with Cassidy, and that is extremely helpful. I still stress about my ability to pepper clues and red herrings throughout the book, but I can’t fail until I try. What’s more is that the clues, while important, are actually much more understated than it seems they might be if you’re not really analyzing a work. I mean, a lot of the time, “clues” are just things that happen that your investigator doesn’t have the proper context for, that make sense after the mystery is solved. Only very occasionally are clues going to be the fingernail trimmings found in the ashtray, or the discarded zorro mask. More often it’s the fact that the baby’s blanket disappeared, or the friend you haven’t seen in a decade happens to drop by.

I’m trying to work Cassidy’s history into the “present-tense” narrative of the story, and I’m not sure if I’m doing a good job, but hey, that’s what writers’ group is for, right? I’m liking how the theme of the book—identity—is working its way into the peripheral parts of the story without my having meant to squish it in. That’s pretty cool. Mostly, I’m appreciating the things that happen when my brain percolates the story, and I really look forward to writing those things down. So now I just have to conquer the sleepies and the what-if’s and the what-then’s and start writing things down. I managed the first draft in thirty days. Twenty-eight, maybe. If I set myself a word goal, maybe I could manage the second draft in, say, sixty days.

That’s it. I’m setting myself a weekday word goal of 2,000 words per day. I don’t have a top limit, so that’ll be until the book is written, however long that is. On my blog posts I’ll be posting my word count, so all of you readers, you many readers, you legion of readers can keep me honest.

To infinity. And beyond! (Today’s word count: 5,129. Special character? ᐉ [typography is fun])

Not much progress

Blogging three times a week keeps me accountable to myself. Every day I sit down to blog I have to look at the progress I’ve made, that I’m here to report. Since Jan 1, I’ve made vanishingly little progress, and I feel guilty about that.

Monday, I started writing my synopsis. I don’t know what the guidelines for a professional synopsis are, but mine is a bulleted, chronological list of “what God knows” about my story. The third-person-omniscient survey of the barebones events, (mostly) lacking adjectives and adverbs, to keep things straight. This is going to be helpful, but it does resemble outlines I’ve made in the past, and my writing tends to have a bare fingerhold on the outline by the time I’m done with the story.

Still, for now, it will help.

As usual, I avoidance-behaviored until I didn’t have enough time left to finish my synopsis before having to run off to the next engagement, so I didn’t. Still, starting it was good, and the stuff I got down definitely helped me line up some limes. If I can just turn Blogging, and synopsis-writing, and other things that start to tickle my creative armpit turn into actual productive writing, I’ll be set.

So, how do I slay the dragon of inaction? Every time I talk to my therapist about feeling creatively blocked, this is what she always asks me. I always feel like shouting, “I don’t know! If I did, I wouldn’t be here complaining about it!” But it’s not like she can tell me how to fix it. I have to figure it out for myself. So, like I have so many times before, I will now enumerate the things I can do to help slay the dragon.

• Do what needs doing first, first. (Shower, breakfast.)
• Do the next things, next. (Check feeds.)
• After those things are done, if there are more things that need done, do them. (Lunch.)
• Then write.

Do Not:

• Turn on Netflix “just while I’m eating lunch.”
• Play phone games.
• Play computer games.

If I can follow this list of things, I should be able to make steady progress on my story. It helps immensely to keep in mind that this isn’t impossible; it’s not even really hard. It’s just a matter of habit and keeping things “the right size.” Everyone is rooting for me, and there are several people who may actually be mad at me if I don’t finish this book. So... I’m gonna birth this goddamned story if it tears me apart! And then I’ll spend the next 50 years or so lecturing it about how long I was in labor. (Baddum ching.)

I’m gonna do it with the wide-open eyes of a person who hasn’t yet learned that being creative is hard work. A person who thinks “improving” instead of “failing.” A person who doesn’t question why, she does it because it must be done, and because she must do it, and it’s as simple as that.

So I’m gonna wrap up this post and get to it now. I wish I could share it with you!