Month: June 2022

Truthfully, I just thought the title sounded good. Pontification is a word I tend to enjoy. It refers to pompous or dogmatic speech (of which I am occasionally accused). It works double because I am going start by saying gaming helps me get my writing day started. Seriously. There is nothing better than gaming for that. I either play something active like Madden or Apex Legends (all hail EA, apparently) or I listen to a book while Minecrafting. The process works for me. At the root is the moment to clear my head and not think about the natural world, because the natural world and all of its largely unnatural responsibilities detract from the process. Writing is about disconnecting (and reconnecting in a oft fictional way) and getting some distance and focusing on the telling of the thing, so for me it takes a bridge to get that moving. Honestly, I make the bridge too long.

Yeah, I game too much. I game when I should be writing. I was going to game instead of blogging right now, but I didn’t and that sure feels like progress to me. The key, as my partner explains, is balance. You have to know when you’re doing too much. It is misleading to think you aren’t doing enough, because the nature of the game is to give you that jolt of dopamine like any other good drug does. Also like any other good drug, you get hooked and don’t let go. I have kids who can go 8 hrs gaming and never even notice the day passed them right by. This is the oddness of the gamer-verse. Like Tik Tok, once you are sucked in, time ceases to have meaning.

So, balance in all things: especially games.

Some Thoughts:

1. Submit work here. Now: https://www.craftliterary.com/submit/

Ever think that there is simply too much going on for you to sit and write? That is real. It is a feeling triggered by the understanding that you (A) Have a Life. (B) Have a Job (C) Have to really sit down and think to crunch out the specifics of your writing, and (D) Are writing more than one thing. I rarely meet a writer who is working on just one project. Even my students have other classes, jobs, crap going on. Everyone who commits to this lifestyle has things to do and everyone has a engrained responsibility to themselves to write. But how to focus on just one thing is a conundrum. No, I don’t have the answer.

Okay, I sort of have the answer but it is not terribly workable. See, you could lock yourself in a room with no internet access and a deck (computer) rigged up with only stuff pertaining to the one thing you are supposed to be doing that moment. This is how it was for writers who used typewriters back in the day. The amount of focus needed to type on an old Corona is different than our modern world. Writing back then was different–focused even. So, this supposed solution is, in fact, non-workable.

Okay, I have another: Become a better scheduler of mental time and energy. This includes not taking so much on. I was watching Where did you go, Bernadette? again yesterday and I was taken by the beauty of the story and the titular character. Genius demands activity and she was straight dying in the lack of a focal project. Therefore, genius also demands focus. So, really dig in. Get a planner. Write in that bad boy every single day and develop them habit of mind of getting the menial stuff down and done every day early, so you can have a moment (maybe even schedule that moment) to write what matters to you the most.

It is somewhat ironic that the day after I post about burnout I deliver what is the shortest blog in the history of the 10 minute rule. I was burned last night and could not put together much in spite of staring at the screen and poking despairingly at the keys. This too is a part of the process. I never stop wishing people could be more like computers in that you can shut down and debug a computer, clearing out the bad. Upon restart the computer runs like new. We don’t have a restart. We have a sleep cycle, but that is truly hit or miss for most of us. All of this brings me to my point on writing for the day. The good way to reengage yourself in good writing is mindful thought.

No, I’m not talking about meditation. That has value in the process, but specifically I am talking about listening to the natural world and thinking about what you hear. The term natural is used loosely here. I mean turning off the TV and the phone and any other digital distraction and listening to the wind, the cars moving by, the birds chirping, people in the streets, the scuff of shoes on hot pavement, the hum of an idling bus. All of this serves to trigger our minds to reflect and to catch up with the fleeting thoughts banging around inside our minds that we never take the time to settle in on. I don’t know if your story lives in those thoughts, but I do know some forgotten moment of your day/life is waiting there to be realized.

Generally speaking our society is geared towards time moving forward and consuming as much as we possibly can. Little is geared towards reflecting on what is consumed. We take it in, we enjoy it, we share it, we move on. In a society of consumption little is thought about the mental waste consumption inevitably creates. That is what I want you to consider in your pause. That waste–that mental debris is what is killing our creativity and our focus. So, as with all waste, we need to take a minute to face it. Perhaps ten minutes.

People say life is not a game. I say life is entirely a game. It is an open world RPG in which the win conditions are largely up to the player but based around the concept of ‘player success’ which can be defined by the player.

Yesterday I wrote about the inevitability of politics/ideology in writing. I didn’t explain how people wind up living there. At some point for may writers, the theme or ideology becomes the overriding factor of story creation. As I explained, I have a general idea of what I’m trying to tackle in my writing–the concept of how people confront their own truths being challenged and confront realizing their truths may be false. All of that is well and good and good breeding ground for story, but it isn’t an idea. This is fundamental to story–you have to have an interesting bit of whatever to write about. When I wrote my last novel I started on absolute empty. I did not have an idea or a character or anything, and I was lucky enough to collaborate with people to at least get a where to work with. Once I had that, the rest unraveled itself.

For me idea formation can be the toughest part. I used to come up with ideas out of nowhere, and while now it does happen more and more, it happens at the most inopportune times—while I am driving. On a bus. in the shower. mid sentence of a conversation, etc…. My new strategy is carrying a notebook to write these things down–a portable version of my old-fashioned idea archive. The trick, of course, is going back to the notebook enough that the seed of an idea can be fertilized into a thing worth writing.

If you are stuck on ideas then the key to restoration is threefold:

1. Walk around your land. Observe people and situations and write down what is happening and what you imagine to be happening.
2. Read and listen to one piece of fiction from your past you really enjoyed. I go back to the Dark Tower every decade or so.
3. Stare at a blank page for three minutes exactly. Them write like mad for three minutes. Turn page. Repeat.

Some Thoughts:

1. When I went into the woods I was writing without the internet, which led to me forgetting to post those blogs. They’ve since been posted and all relevant renumbering handled.
2. If I can remember to do this, I am going to talk about unraveling plot and character for the reader tomorrow.

Here in the woods I have discovered more than a little of that inspiration I wrote on yesterday. It is easy to be inspired in a place of such beauty and calm and in this sacred space I discovered a truth about myself and my writing. What I write is often about the idea of truth—more specifically it is about the subjective nature of truth and how people react to their truth being questioned and how far they are willing to go in order to defend it.

Generally speaking, I have written about this throughout my career/life. However, I’ve done so without recognizing the core of what I was attempting to argue. My latest independent work challenges two fundamental truths: one about racial perception and one about the power/uniqueness of the human construct. Both are questions I carried with me since I was a boy growing up In Harlem and going to a wealthy midtown public school where the few other black kids were all dynamically special in some sort of way, while I was just an out of place kid. I should have recognized it then in my earliest works; in Horace Treefellow and Liefer Shadowseek, elves who were apart from their people largely because of perception and position. I didn’t.

In higher level literature classes the focus is often on what is the author trying to say with this work vs. what does the work itself say as a reflection of time and place (often regardless of intentionality). As a writer, knowing what you are saying helps to quietly carve the borders around the action of what will be in a story. Inside those lines your characters will paint your story for you. Inside those lines the individual motivations and interconnections can grow into relationships that shape and direct a tale. I am now aware of what it is I say overall. I am also aware of how dramatically large and wide that umbrella of meaning truly is.

As a takeaway, try to consider what it is you are saying and thinking about when you are shaping your stories. Try to envision in your palette of characters and scenarios just what it is you feel about the world you are creating and or writing about. That theme should form the canvas upon which those stories find their form.

*note* this and the following blog were written in the Olympic National Forest and significantly out of internet range.

I am sitting near the shores of Crescent Lake in Washington and realizing that a number of writers have come this way, seen the beauty, and rooted their stories in this space. Perhaps I am going to be the next to do so. The beauty of the space is undeniable. The calm of the space is so encouraging that I was excited to be able to come back to the page and write about it. I love being here. I love that I can be at the shore staring into crystal waters and moments later be so deep in forest that I cannot see anything but trees and undergrowth. It is a powerful location; one that the first people viewed as sacred and one that I must as well.

All of this is to say that inspiration is my topic for these ten minutes. A writer without inspiration is a writer winding down the clock of their literary existence. We cannot write without having that fuel that fires us. We must find inspiration in our own ways. It may be place or situation—even desperation. Many athletes rely on their physical craft to get them out of their dead-end living situations. Many artists are the same. I believe writers are no different. If you are hungry—if you are desperate—you are encouraged to pour your soul down the tip of that pen or out the end of your fingers on to a waiting keyboard and let the world feel your want and your message.

Like a double-edged sword, inspiration has a second side—it is also a promise. If you are inspired you are then required to use that inspiration and turn it into something of value; even if only to yourself and even if only a stepping stone to a greater project or realization. In short, do not waste what inspires you, because inspiration is temporary and fleeting.

I am inspired. I do not mean to waste that. I expect to write hard over these next few days and weeks and produce work that is worth reading.

All writing is politics. It doesn’t have to be an overt thing, but the situations you place your characters in and how they react to those situations and the world around them are reflections on your ideology. This is not to say your characters beliefs what you do—often they do not and this too is a reflection. It is, therefore, important to be aware of what you are doing in this respect and namely to make sense of what you are saying or actively avoiding in your writing.

I worked with a writer for a time who was adamant about not writing about typical straight relationships. It was important to her to showcase non-traditional couplings. That was political — even if not overtly. She was aiming to bring new into the light. It was a good move. My last novel was incredibly multi-ethnic. Also a Choice.

these choices are rocks thrown into the ocean with the potential to stir the waters. I for one believe the waters need to be stirred. In the wake of ROE being overturned we should all be aware of what we need and how we can voice those needs through our words.

I’ve been thinking about the dreaded S word. When I teach writing I treat Series like a curse word. I act as though the idea of having the second, third, and so on book in your head is a crime. It isn’t entirely. It is, however, putting the cart before the horse in the most basic sense of the term. When you are thinking about series you are thinking about a super-structure of books and not giving thought or attention to the primary structure of a series, which is how the initial book is formed and the expectation you set for both the reader and yourself with that initial successful story. Consider Harry Potter, The Maze Runner, and The Hunger Games–all series for a certain age and all series that build upon a structural expectation. What the reader keeps coming back to beyond the characters is the structure of the plot. Harry is advancing in school, but he still has that year to year structure with something new added every year and added risks and or something taken away due to the increasing age and increasing danger of the situation. The Maze Runner is even simpler. It is about running the maze–until it isn’t. The Hunger Games repeat the games until it becomes about the larger political game of changing the world. It is curse of genre in the way that isekai anime are all going to have a similar structure with a twist.

Books designed for more mature readers often repeat structures as well. You know what to expect from a Jack Ryan novel or any western or romance, because they hold to that familiar structure. All of that being said, the best writers are the ones who are able to turn this similarity of structure into a natural thing. Harry Potter works because the structural expectation is built into the story. Twilight fails because the structural similarity is entirely contrived.

I say this to ask you to consider the structure of your first story in you series, because how you start builds the expectation for what follows.

Some Thoughts:

1. Kids are going to disappoint you. They will usually do it by doing exactly as you expect they will do, and you aren’t going to like it one bit. That is the problem with them being individuals. They act independently and generally in their best interest–even if it is to the detriment of your own.

I wanted the first words I wrote this morning to be this ten minute blog. I wanted that to come before posting classes or even checking and responding to emails. Habits of mind are key. The things you do first in the morning are the things you find the most instant gratification in. I wake up and get a game in. Win or lose it is low-hanging fruit. I need to change that to the blog. Writing, you see, is a way of being. As Din Djarin famously put, “This is the way.”

Writing must become a Way for those who seek to create story. Be it casual or professional, writing requires determination and a particular state of mind in order to get anything out of it. Unlike the morning game of Clash Royale, this is no three minute win or lose proposition. However, if you can sustain at least ten minutes on task, I can promise from experience that you will get something out of it, and that something will likely be both good and a foundation to build upon both through the day and through your life.

Writing can be a way to live out your fantasy in a way games are not. Writing can also be a way to seek understanding of what is happening in your life and in the world around you. I think we can all use a bit more understanding in the present world. For me, writing is a way to connect to the world. I want to be heard. I want to know that what I create will last beyond me. I realize the ego involved in that statement and I don’t care. As I said: This is the Way. I believe that I am not alone in that either. Anyone who takes the time and effort to raise kids is leaving a legacy all the same.

Yet the point of writing is more immediate. Writing is an exorcism. Writing is a rationalization. Writing is an escape. Writing is a lodestone. Writing is all of these things and more and the way you know what writing is to you is to write it down and find out what your voice has to say.