10 Minute Rule

So you think you’re done for the night. You’re well into your third episode of Daredevil, red-eyed and binge happy. You move this party from the living room to the bedroom thinking, maybe one more episode and i’ll call it a night. Why not? You wrote a bunch today; progress on the project is behind but manageable and after today it ought to be back on track in another two. The kids are asleep, the pets are fed, the house is, well, still dirty but you earned the rest.

Then suddenly you remember you didn’t put in your ten.

So, here you are. You slide out the laptop, flip it open to a blank webpage, type the familiar sequence, and… The words are harder lately. That’s one of the problems with working on one type of thing exclusively for a long time. Myopia is a real thing that affects writers long before they realize what is happening. Sure, they start to build a kind of rhythm doing A, but B,C,D is for crap. So you take a deep breath and think about what you want to say that isn’t what you’re writing now. Sadly, there isn’t much. Time to recharge the batteries. Binge watch something different. Read something obscure. Find a couple of words you haven’t touched in years. Find a few you haven’t touched at all.

Being a writer–a thinker–is about stretching the limits of what you know and understand. It is about being willing to see every perspective and find the good and the bad in all of them. Sounds like the life to live.

At this point you can track what time of night I post based on how short it is and how incoherent. There are more than enough points of data to prove that I shouldn’t effort to write at night but here I am again, trying to write at night and discovering how much that doesn’t work. As a (newly reformed) planner I think any future plan ought to account for that. See, the act of creation requires a great deal more activation energy than say grading a paper or prepping a lesson. I can do those things at night, but trying to design a first contact strategy for an insectoid alien species that lives in a fragile ecosystem? No, that is some daytime drama right there. This, therefore, becomes another reason why I am happy. 41 years in and I’m living a life that allows me to set a schedule that works for me.

Yep, 41. That is the real issue at play here. Around this time last year I was 40 and now I’m not. What do I have to show for it? Quite a bit of knowledge gained. I’d love to suggest that knowledge gained is relative to speed lost but there is no correlation. In fact, I feel like I’ve lost some plasticity in the brain, just through daily wear and tear multiplied by 15,000+ days.

A friend who is up past me in years just recently explained how he intends to get down below 10% body fat. He’s a beast. He’s an inspiration. I am no less lazy than I was a year ago and perhaps more given the plasticity issue. However, I feel that need more now than ever and as I age I feel that desire to do something impactful more and more.

So, yeah. I’m getting organized and scheduled again and I’m getting off the couch. It is about that time.

On the eve of St Patrick’s day I went back to the age old formula of structuring time for writing. I cannot explain why I walked away from this type of thing for so long. I can make the excuse that there were (and continue to be) so many things going on in my life that it is very difficult to pick a single time to work. That is little more than a cop out. If you’re going to be a writer you need to prioritize time for writing. This is not necessarily to the detriment of all other things in your life, but a full life will need to find some time to sacrifice for the craft.

I sacrificed TV and sitting around for hours on end. Even there the word sacrifice is over stated. True, I generally don’t have the time to binge-watch shows while in ‘writer mode’ but I can find an hour between writing sessions/anything else to give myself the time to mentally recharge.

I’m drained tonight. I need a recharge.

A flurry of blog posts, a result of being on the road and without reliable internet for days. It is strange to have been born into a world without internet and feel, well, naked when you are in a place that doesn’t have the connective digital cloud. I’ve seen people go through more withdrawal than I have, absolutely freaking when they can’t get a video on their phones. The new normal is so thoroughly disconnected from the reality of thirty–even fifteen years ago that it lends credence to this theory of an ever accelerating tech curve.

Which brings me back to the blogs not getting through… or anything connected happening. Honestly, I kind of liked it. I can see how being disconnected is anathema to millenials but I love the idea of being out of touch for at least a bit. What I hate is the flood of emails and texts that await when I check back in.

I suppose there ought to be a balance.

Some Thoughts:

1. Dear Fox (Faux?) News: Stop hiring blonde women as a wedge to be placed between two older men. It is starting to wear on America–even on your America. We get it. We understand the ideal you are striving to recreate.
2. While we are still talking, how does it feel to not really have a candidate you can push? Gotta to be hard on ya. I mean you had a pundit call Cruz a liberal. That happened.
3. Finally, stop acting like 2008 was ever really in doubt. Obama locked that vote up and won with a ridiculous margin. The fact remains that whoever (read: Clinton) is the Democratic nominee will also wreck shop against Trump. You have to know that by now.

My experience yesterday is a stark reminder of the perils of road travel. I didn’t have any real internet access so I couldn’t post it, but it all boils down to the fact that the Avi hotel near Laughlin is a terrible place. I say near Laughlin and they say in Laughlin. I suppose they are correct by technicality, but the place is 20 minutes away from any other piece of civilization, leading me to say it isn’t really even near Laughlin. I don’t get sad much but this hotel left me extremely sad. The whole place is a commentary on what not to do.

The Avi is built like an arcology. It is a self contained system of weak activities and paper food built around a casino that promises slowly delivered and watered down free booze, and slots so tight I could describe them with a line from a misogynistic rap song (I.e. Tight like a million…). I hated this place. The price tag led me there, but the smoke choked atmosphere drove me away.

Here’s what threw me: The place is a 4.5 star review on multiple websites. That means that there is someone with ISIS level social media savvy running around and making Avi seem a lot better than it is. I mean, they promised a dazzling food court, 30 nearby river and private beach, party-driven pool, world class gambling, and an on-site movie theater. The reviewers praised these amenities, but what I saw was not at all what was advertised. The gambling was for crap, the pool was basic, the theater closed at 7. Perhaps the worst part was the food situation which looked so terrible that I refused to eat. The main restaurant boasted $15 appetizers as if this was a bargain of some sort. After seeing the rest of the amenities, the only choice was to flee… to a room with a crappy bed and poor TV service.

So I am here, sitting in that bed after a poor night’s sleep, complaining about last night. At least I have this blog as catharsis.

I had a very strange video game experience the other day. I was playing The Division and I walked into a mission with a ton of confidence, mowed down almost all the baddies in a cavalcade of skill and patience. So, I was almost done with the entire experience when a guy I thought I shot got up and took me out. Now this isn’t really important or the point at all. The point is that I tried to go back and do the mission again and I tried and tried and six or maybe seven times later I recognized that it wasn’t working. I was missing something. Maybe it was the whirlwind of energy and confidence I started with and maybe that itself is the point.

I think it all comes down to state of mind. People often say mind over matter and willpower rules the day and all that jazz, but they often don’t believe it. The fact is there is truth to the matter. I lost confidence and lost the ability to succeed—and I’m not just talking about video games here. When I started getting my head right, I started having more success.

I needed this.

No, really. I’ve been in this grinder of activity that left me almost entirely unwilling or able to function. My creativity woes are well documented, and a good amount of that has to do with being behind on, well, everything. What hurts the most is the slow going of my writing. How long can I continue to say I’m better than this until ‘better than’ becomes yesterday’s memory?

The break is a wonderful opportunity to catch my breath and plot a way forward not only through the end of the semester but through the summer and all of its hurdles and well into a serious writing uptick. See, I figured out a while ago that I’m not going to be able to get back to the type of production that made me love the words without developing a plan and having time to execute. So, game on.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Katie Holmes and Jamie Foxx? I’m curious about her. She has to be more interesting than she comes off in roles. I feel like her roles have evolved and her personality might be shining through in her later work.
2. Was gonna write about Trump, but the entire thing disgusts me. The hypocrisy involved is so deep that I can watch one group do something and then turn to an opponent doing the same thing and complain that they shouldn’t be allowed to do it. That’s some nonsense right there.

I’ve been thinking about science fiction again. Namely I’m considering the role of sci fi in driving the scientific frontier. This popped up again recently when I recognized that the new Pizza car is straight out of a Neal Stephenson novel. Stephenson wrote in 1992, “As he scrunches to a stop, the electromechanical hatch on the flank of his car is already opening to reveal his empty pizza slots, the door clicking and folding back in on itself like the wing of a beetle. The slots are waiting. Waiting for hot pizza.” So, that happened. Finally.

The space between what writers dream and scientists create is collapsing in on itself, as if the two sides of an already thin line are bantering back and forth, one playing against the other for ideas and vie versa. Yesterday’s post was as much about no longer being part of that conversation as it was about anything else.

I don’t feel a part of the conversation because of the very specific niche of science fiction I am writing in as of late. My 2070 is spun out from 90’s tech that evolved quite a bit slower than how things turned out in real life. Likewise, outside of my tiny corder of sci fi, there are a lot of speculative writers–especially in the deep space genre, are being thwarted by the lack of interest and advancement in science. We are collectively more about making money these days than about making discoveries.

The point is that writers and scientists need to push each other and to do so effectively, I believe writers need to imagine what lives far beyond the tech curve to the unimaginable future of what could be. I don’t think I’ve been doing that, and I can think of few writers who are. The majority of us hit a point where we are more interested in talking about the whole thing collapsing than imagining the cool world that would follow if it doesn’t collapse.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. More boys means more noise. Seriously. The more I fill the house with l’il dudes, the more I recognize how truly boisterous and busy boys are.
2. I’m learning to take Trump seriously. He very well could be the next president of the United States. A large part of that is our own political ignorance. For one thing, we have a total inability to distinguish socialism from communism.

It is very hard to be a continually creative person. It is, in many ways, like being expected to churn out 10,000 scarves and only having enough wool for 51 and not ever even getting lunch on breaks. The longer you sit and try to make such things, the worse you and they become. I have become a drained and disappointing individual who has missed a handful of crucial deadlines and, more than that, lost the thread of creativity linking me to the creative ether.

 

I sort of think it is like the speed force. That mythical construct is built in order to give history and vulnerability to the Flash superhero character. His power comes from the speed force like my powers come from the creative force. Losing access to that source of power prevents me from doing anything even remotely interesting. Now the Flash can get his mojo back through some crazy superhero quest or whatever. I gotta just stick my head in 17 books and try to remember what it feels like to wonder and to create.

 

I think the Flash has it easy.

I’m going to get to football in a minute but I want to address the fact that our internal systems are falling apart. I can throw a dart at a US map and hit a city that is dealing with lead in the water system. We have so many structural problems from pipes to roads to outdated power grids and nobody is even a little interested in fixing that. Instead we dump millions into building new stadiums to attract football teams to our cities in hopes of increasing statewide revenue and making us seem that much cooler of a city. That being said, I love football and love the fact that the Giants are dumping money into their defense to get things going.

Olivier Vernon, ‘Snacks’ Harrison, and Janoris Jenkins are off the board. All of these moves as well as the resigning of JPP represent a significant increase in the ability of the Giants to make plays on defense. In so far as offense goes, we haven’t seen much yet. There are a handful of really valuable free agents available–especially at receiver, but I get the feeling the Giants are looking to the draft to fill gaps there and along the offensive line. Still, money is being spent early in free agency and this is a sign that the team is looking to win right now and willing to spend the cash to do so.

Some Thoughts:

1. Politics are very stupid. The media takes something you did 20 years ago and uses it as evidence of how you think and feel today. None of us are who we were even 10 years ago.
2. Bernie Sanders has a very vocal and energized following. Hillary does not.
3. This Benghazi thing is being trotted out every day and made to mean more about what Clinton did and less (almost none) about what happened there.