10 Minute Rule

This is the 75th day since the period of darkness where I did not blog. Nearly three whole months since I lost contact with reality and fell into a stupor of depression. I did not intend to ever write again. Here I am today powering through a novel outline and gathering momentum to write that first tenuous draft. I write this all to reflect on the idea of rising from the ashes/being born again from those ashes. That idea grips me, because most of the stuff the forced me out of the writing game is still real and evident, but my perspective on all of it has shifted dramatically. In other words, it isn’t what you’re dealing with it is how you’re dealing with it.

One thing I’m dealing with is the loss of Shadowrun. I have lost the thread of that world, and until I find it within myself I will not be able to write in that world any further. Instead I am going to start looking at stand alone sci-fi pieces whenever I take a moment away from the fantasy novel. I’m going to try to hold two worlds in my head at once. So long as the first continues to grow.

When I quit writing I felt at that moment that I as done for good, and that felt good. It always feels good to be finished with something. Now I think I felt good because I no longer needed to worry about writing things that I had no interest in writing. That feeling is a part of what killed my drive to begin with. From the ashes me is about the passion project and about writing for the sake of writing. I want to set the words free and let them dance about the page in a rhythm only they can create. A rhythm that reverberates in my soul.

Man, I’m cheesy.

Sunday morning through Tuesday morning is my two-day. It is the 48 (or so) hour period when I don’t have to deal with kids or officially even go into the office. This is becoming my passion period. I spent yesterday working on my novel, binging one of my all-time favorite shows, and watching the Giants look absolutely lost without Beckham.

I made leaps and bounds in the novel realm yesterday, because I connected with my partner and she put her heart to the project. If I’m being honest with myself, I stopped writing for personal pleasure years ago. I wrote to get published and I published a lot of first draft crap. This project is different. It is an evolution of the one true project that has lived in my psyche for most of my life and played out there over and again. At some point it no longer needed to find the page, because the imagined version gave me a settled feeling. Knowing her and being with her makes me want to share all of this with her. So I am writing it down. I am figuring it out and she is a part of it.

I am also coming to the end of HIMYM. Feels like the right time and is very reflective of a lot of what lives in my heart. Not much to say about that yet. I’m still thinking it through.

Some Thoughts:

1. Brandon Marshall is not the receiver he was. That is to say he is completely shut down by safety help. The Cowboys showed help on Marshall all night and held him to one catch on three looks. When Beckham returns, the three WR combo will be lethal, but it is built based on having that kind of weapon. Without Beckham, the team is in trouble. I very much hope they try to get Landry next season.
2. Youth Football can be all consuming–especially when involved with a team that treats it like this is the center of the universe. I got an email yesterday stating that we may or may not have a scrimmage game on Saturday. In other words, I was specifically told to put plans on hold if I want my kid to get playing time. I’m going to see if I can make it work, but this is our last pre-season weekend, and I was expecting to have big fun with the boys. I don’t intend to give up that opportunity.
3. My cat, having the appearance of pregnancy, is merely fat.
4. Grammar week in my English class cannot come soon enough. I’m going to put out a new schedule with Tuesday grammar workshops, because these papers are trash.

I’ve been quickly assembling the outline to a fantasy novel. I am following Alan Watt’s rule for writing in that I’m working to, “Get it down before the hobgoblins of logic and reason kill the drama and aliveness of what you are trying to say.” What I have to say is less than perfect, a little difficult to get through, and not entirely a complete thought. Still, I’m getting there. Today I’m showing it to my partner–my alpha reader–and I’m straight up nervous.

That is new.

That is entirely because I’ve based a segment of the content on a fear-based interpretation of a major conflict in our relationship. By ‘A’ I mean ‘the’ because there isn’t a lot we battle about. This is pretty much it, and this is openly a lost battle on my end. So it went in the book. It serves as a form of catharsis the way it is written and I fear it is going to hurt her, make her uncomfortable, or affect the way she sees me–even if just a little bit. The conversation tag, “We can’t keep talking about this.” has affixed itself to nearly every interaction of late, and I feel like going through this process truly helps me excise the demon of the thing. So, it has to be done.

Now that it is done, my mind is free to do what creatives do: take a smidge of reality and screw with it so dramatically as to make it into story. In a sense, that small action reminded me that I can do that for a lot of what is happening in my life. In truth, that is how I used to write fiction. When I went away from tapping the real, I quickly ran out of the unreal.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. My kids have been playing this game where they breed monsters on an island and the monsters each sing or make different sounds. They then can put the sounds together at different tempos and pitches–literally laying them out in 4/4 time like music notes. What I’m saying is my kids are flat out composing music in a video game and don’t realize it.

Call. Coffee. Write. What is real always endures.

I managed to get to sleep sometime after midnight last night, plum out of excuses for staying awake. I woke to the distant sound of children and realized I’d slept past 5 AM. That is an amazing rarity in my life that was followed by the gentle buzz of my cellphone offering me a morning text from my partner. That feels right. All of it finally felt right this morning–It felt like I’d finally fallen into where I am at.

Some Thoughts:

1. Some things ought to be without question, but questions arise in the midst of confusion and unclarity and lack of definition. Questions beget uncertainty, which beget a lack of self confidence. In such circumstances start with faith in what you know to be actual and ask yourself if the questions affect what is happening right now. Does it fundamentally change what you believe and what you feel? My answer is no. I know what I feel, and what I have in my hands and in my heart. That is always going to be enough.

I am writing a new novel. Part of the point of the process is to let myself go and explore creating something guided completely by its own momentum. The difficult part of that is not getting bogged down in exacts. I’ve gotten to a point where I’m digging into a character’s main quest and I really don’t have a lot there that feels as epic fantasy as I was hoping and doesn’t entirely make a lot of sense. Still, there is good in that. I recognize what is necessary for character growth and what is pure MacGuffin–a stand in item or plot device put there just to push the plot forward. The one true ring in Lord of the Rings is a MacGuffin.

I’m putting my pen where my mouth is on this one. All of the lessons I teach in class over a given week are modeled through the book. In fact, this is likely going to be the basis of my sabbatical–not this particular book, but the creation of a semester long website that details daily assignments, prompts, etc. on how to create a book in a semester. I think I’ll call it the 16 Week Novel–Until something better comes along.

Some Thoughts:

1. Missed opening night of football and it was epic. Patriots got thumped to the tune of 42 points allowed. There’s more to that. Eric Berry is probably done for the season, so the Chiefs are about to feel the burn too.
2. Had a dream about playing football again. I was out of shape and slow. I think it was reflective of watching my son run in the football practice and realizing where his speed tops out and being a bit disappointed that he isn’t faster–which somehow feels like a failure on my part.
3. Cats are cool, but Dogs….

It is said that those who roam the Broken Sea are madmen. The squalls and storms can rise up at any moment and there are always whispers of a more malevolent nature, of ships cutting through the waters bearing flags of nations long since forgotten. Ships that, under a cloak of fog, vanish from sight to never be seen again. There is talk of creatures larger and longer than the bowsprit of Wynspurlan War Galleons with fat rubbery tentacles that can crush a man completely. For a man to be a sailor in this stretch of water is madness, but for a man to fish is quite far beyond reason.

Elric of Adon captained a small scut he titled Windsplitter. She was a sea worthy vessel, cut from the heartwood of an oak his great great great grandfather planted on their farm some three hundred stones ago in the time of Calleon. Elric spent two nights chopping down that tree. The sound of his blows carried through the thin air and rose like a warble to the village at the base of the beach. Each morning he would leave his retreating lands to find rope and tar and tether all to help him with his quest. He was not a fisherman. He came from hard earth and tilled corn and wheat well past his twenty seventh stone.

When the drought fell, he knew his farm wouldn’t recover and he turned to the great oak. He turned to the Broken Sea.

I wanted to talk about infusing the real in writing. Often the things that makes fantasy accessible is how real the emotions and basic situations are for the characters. Take this scenario for example: Kastigan is a Privateer whose ship, The Flame, operates in the Broken Sea. He is protecting a barge moving inland towards Koril. None of this sounds remotely like a story that is real. However, his crew is starting to distrust him, riled up by a particularly distrustful and charismatic crew member and the sea itself is full of obstacles, so he must fear the choppy waters around him and the enemies at his back. More familiar? The second half of that conflict is real. I could just as easily written that as Evan the professor trying to deal with the rigors of teaching students who will pull any trick for an easy A while a co worker fights to destroy his reputation in order to cement her own as queen bee. Same story. Different clothing.

The key is to use all of that real in order to shape the context of the fantasy–give it the gravitas of a situation that feels all to familiar but in a shell that is utterly foreign. More and more my writing is like that. Perhaps that is what makes it work.

Some Thoughts:

1. I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve stopped wanting to say I feel good and even hopeful about my writing or even on the verge, because the moment I do is when shit goes south.

With the NFL season about to get underway I wanted to step forward and make a few bold predictions…

1. It all starts with the unlikely (becoming more likely) retirement of Darelle Revis. I expected him to sign with his hometown Steelers while secretly hoping he’d don Giants blue. Both teams made other moves at corner, signaling an end to Revis Island.
2. From there we visit Kaepernick Island. The forlorn QB has been a castaway from the NFL thanks to his kneeling for the pledge. In a nation that prides itself so heavily on the right to free speech, we put a lot behind the power of the public and the media. CK is better than at least 10 starting QBs in the league right now and cannot even find a job as a lowly backup.
3. Speaking of backing people up, the number of aging defenders who cannot find good work has climbed dramatically. One look at the Madden slush pile is a reminder that teams are preparing for the future while trying to maximize their profit with younger (read: cheaper) players.
4. The Jets, Bills, and Browns have all actively tanked this season before it started. The same can be surmised for the Vikings and Colts, but they were not nearly as obvious as the first three–especially the first two. Still, I expect each of these teams to eek out a win or three on their race to the bottom, proving that there is some level of parity in the main grouping of the NFL. Still, the elite teams will continue to be elite.
5. That list includes the Patriots who are without their go-to receiver in Edelman. This promises more work for Gronk who will have a record year on the way to another playoffs. In the end they won’t have the chops to knoc off the Raiders.
6. On the other side of the rock, the Giants will tough it out and meet team Beast in the big show.
7. I’m taking the Giants 24-12

I have a list of things I want to look up before Tuesday hits. It’s like a job, getting ready for the ‘on’ days. There’s finding the right snack for my kids who will come home and have between thirty minutes (the big one) and an hour and a half (lil one) to finish HW, snack, relax, and prep for practice. Two hours plus later I’ll have all three and they’ll be expecting a full meal on the table. They’ll expect some time to hang with me and, for the middle one, time to do the HW he couldn’t do because he never gets home till after practice(s).

It is for this reason I’ve started to look at these three weekdays of the fall semester as a second job. I recognize spring will be easier once we’ve cleared this hurdle, because we are leaving football behind. For now there are three days in which a chunk of hours of the evening is devoted to sports and running around.

But what about the rest?

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Something has to give here. Either I decide to become the guy who shows up everywhere alone or I find myself a companion to hang with during that dark near two day stretch where I don’t see another human being. I’m in the stretch now and I’m not a fan. I used to go out to this restaurant for bbq and bourbon night, but the first time I showed up with my lady I realized that the staff I’d gotten to ‘know’ apparently pitied me for being the guy for showing up alone. I am somewhat sensitive to what people think. Not so much what they are thinking as the vibe I’m putting out there. If that vibe doesn’t match what I am trying to send it gives me pause.
2. Part of me gets the sense that this is ‘my chance’ to sit down and have uninterrupted stretches of work time to develop the things that I want. I gotta learn how to fall into that sense more and not be afraid of the blank page. I mean, when else am I really writing?
3. All in. That’s the term I’ve been reaching for. I’m looking for all in.

Started watching Hero Academia last night and quickly came to the conclusion that this is another version of DBZ, Naruto, etc. By that I mean to say that all of these shows are inherently binary hero journeys; story formulae in which the hero begins with a companion that could and should be his greatest ally but for ambition and or rage. That then creates a false antagonist and builds a parallel story as we follow both through their respective journeys.

The above is the main throughline of Naruto. It also follows for DBZ and Hero Academia. While there are other stories that are of note, I’ve spent extensive time with the first two and just started the third. I will point out that I am quick to ignore Attack on Titan because it simply doesn’t fit the argument and Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood, because the binary nature of the show doesn’t pit them against each other but instead forces a dependent cooperative that models the target shows later seasons.

What I am really getting at here is a storytelling model that works. We have in this binary telling of the hero’s journey something that draws fans to either side and creates a false dichotomy that attracts tons of viewers. As I am presently designing a novel with dual protagonists forced into service together, I might be able to make some use of the structure.

Some Thoughts:

1. Football talk: Giants cut Will Tye and the flashy new receiver Travis Rudolph from Florida State. Adam Bisnowaty also failed to survive the axe, after showing amazingly quick feet and presence on the OL. Rudolph and Bisnowaty may have been practice squad gambles, built on the hope they’d clear waivers. This remains to be seen.
2. I get the sense that lately I’ve been really overwhelming to the woman I love. I gotta back off.