I am not doing NaNoWriMo, and it feels like I’m opting out of a big party in order to study or something. (more…)
Category: Writer’s Life
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Writers & Exercise
There seems to be some evidence that people sit too much.
Well, that’s some low-hanging fruit there, but it’s true and it’s something that we don’t think about. When we’re in the car we don’t think “I’m sitting down”, we think “I’m heading somewhere”. Or something like that.
I’m here to tell you that I spent the summer of 2012 essentially on my butt. The entire summer. This matters because I didn’t think I was just sitting around. No, I was writing. Creating new stories, revising others and surfing the Internet. Watching TV. Visiting with friends. Worse, I’d broken the habit of walking every morning for 2.5 – 3 miles. A habit I’d acquired over five years. Every morning out for a walk. Unless it was too cold (under 45*F) or there was lightning or I had to be somewhere before 8 AM.
I fooled myself into believing I was being creative, learning, vegging out, whatever. I never considered that it would cause me problems. My knees started hurting. There were little aches and pains that developed. I thought nothing of them. Come fall when I became more active, much more active, I didn’t notice that I was having troubles.
My knees got worse. I didn’t notice that I was actually slowing down when I walked places. I failed to see that I had begun to have trouble breathing.
That was the beginning of the trouble that would eventually land me in the hospital with massive bilateral pulmonary embolism. The trouble that nearly killed me.
I was living with untreated (and at that point undiagnosed) ulcerative colitis. My failure to move about I’m sure contributed to the problem. It had to. Thankfully it appears the colitis is heading towards remission. I’m walking regularly and things are much, much better. Doesn’t mean I don’t worry, that I don’t take note of every little ache and pain that pops up but I keep track of the ones that don’t exist any more, too. There are more of the latter than the former.
But when I’m writing, when I get in The Zone, it’s hard to remember that I need to get up and walk around. I mean, I don’t want to lose the roll I’m on and I don’t want to have to come back in fifteen or twenty minutes and remember where I was. I’m sure the same thing applies to you.
My own experience tells me that I do need to do that, though. That’s why I modified my old drawing table and turned it into a standing desk. At first I didn’t think it would be for me but it turns out one of the benefits of standing is that when I get frustrated and need a break from the screen I can walk away instead of leaning back in my chair.
Sounds simple but it’s effective. I don’t lose The Zone and I move around for a couple of minutes. It rests my eyes, gets the blood flowing and burns a couple of calories. Another side benefit is that I tend not to snack when I’m standing. I still drink coffee or whisky, let’s not be silly, but the snacking and the moving around are good for me.
This may not be for you. I exhort you to consider, though, the report I linked to above. What can it hurt?
(Note: I cross posted this from my blog because the Cafe is an appropriate venue to discuss this.)
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Fallow Fields
If you look through my journals for the past ten years or so, they will all say the same thing. February sucks, I’m not writing a thing, I’m not reading a thing, it’s too cold to go outside, all I do is go to work and watch crap television and go to bed at an hour where all the other grownups are thinking about heading out to spend time with friends. Why can’t humans hibernate, I wail, and would somebody please come wake me up when it’s spring? This year was no different.
It’s a terrible, empty feeling when I can’t write. I’ll look at a writing prompt: “The color blue.” “Romance is in the air.” “What is your favorite TV show and why?” and not be able to write a single word. “The color blue— what does that even mean?”
Worst of all is not being able to read, nothing more complicated than Facebook updates and aggressively inoffensive lifestyle blogs. I’ll pick out a book, something highly recommended, something I know I should like, and midway through each paragraph I’ll find myself staring at a blank patch of air in the middle distance, with no clue what I just read. Maybe, maybe, if the book is an old favorite I’ll be able to concentrate on it. “Reader” is an integral part of my identity. I don’t remember not knowing how to read, and not being able to hurts.
I’m not kidding about the hibernation, either. In February all I want to do is lie under a lasagna stack of blankets and cats and stare at the back of my eyelids, mind totally blank. I’m not thinking. I’m not meditating—meditating would require me to do something. I’m just switched off for a while. About the only thing that will get me out of bed is when I have to pee, or I have to turn off the clock radio because they’re playing Garrison Keillor again.
The thing is, I know there’s something going on back there, deep in my subconscious. All my creative energy is going somewhere, working hard on something. I’m just not allowed to see it yet.
Then March peeks around the corner and things begin to get better. It’s still light our for a bit when I get home from work. The season softens from Frostbite to Mud. Daylight Savings Time arrives and without changing a thing I’m suddenly living an adult human schedule. I begin to read again, write again, outline and plan and plot and speak with my imaginary friends again.
Things will get better. They always do. There are the faintest green shoots in fallow fields.
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Can’t Let Go
Not letting these stand in my way because I can’t let go of my desire to tell stories. Been awhile since I’ve been here in any regular capacity. It seems, as I expected, that the Cafe has survived quite nicely and even thrived in my absence. For those who don’t know, here’s the short version: I got sick, really sick, and had to take some time to get healthy before I could think straight about what I needed to do to be a writer. Let me tell you up front that coming close to dying can truly change one’s mindset. Anyway, I’m a lot better and the outlook is good.
All right, enough about that. It’s old news at this point for anyone who knows me and tedious going for everyone else who doesn’t really care. I mentioned it to give some context to why I think about certain things and how they may’ve changed.
Now [rubs hands together], let’s get back to it, shall we? (more…)
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Quote Me On That
“Quotes are nothing but inspiration for the uninspired.” – Richard Kemph, writer and retired British military Commander.
I love quotes. If you have followed this site from the beginning, you might remember that my posts always began with a quote. I would find some insightful nugget that illustrated my point and tag it to the top of the page. There is something spectacular about a good quote. They seem to transcend time and genre.
That being said, you might be surprised that I don’t keep track of them. I don’t write down lines that struck me as interesting. I don’t note interesting quotes I find. I enjoy them for the minutes, and then I kick them loose. If I am looking for a quote on a specific topic, I use it and send it on its way. When reading, I rarely underline or make notes unless I will be doing literary criticism on that particular work.
Quotes might be useful, but in the hierarchy of creative inspiration, they rank pretty low. They are just sort of a fun afterthought, like the mint at the bottom of the Sonic bag. It’s like finding a penny on the ground. Its a nice surprise, but it has to be pretty shiny for me to pick up.
The way I see it, I absorb everything I read on either a conscious or subconscious level. Whether I actively remember it or not, it is drifting around my head, adding to the creative mix, waiting for its moment. For example, I recently read Cover by Jack Ketchum. I adore Jack Ketchum’s work. His stories are haunting, but quite honestly I couldn’t remember a single phrase from the story. I remembered the book. I remembered a strong emotional connection. I didn’t remember a single line of actual writing.
Part of that is Ketchum’s writing style. He never gets in the way of his characters, letting them take the stage while never drawing attention to himself. It’s a spectacular talent, and there are lots of writers who don’t have it. You are sucked into the story to such a depth that it stops being sentences on paper. Ketchum is capable of good one-liners. Looking up his quotes, you have such lines as “Black coffee’s a lot like whiskey, you know? All devil and no trimmin’s. Always liked my sins pure and take it as it comes” (from Off Season). Or, “As though all the world were a bad joke and she was the only one around who knew the punchline” (from The Girl Next Door, along with its haunting opening line “You think you know about pain?”)
When I have a truly good connection to a book, I don’t have the time to write down an interesting quote, anymore than the guy wearing the clown-wig and foam hands in the endzone has time to write down Tom Brady’s yards per attempt. I have to get to the next page, and anything that slows me down is my enemy.
I write the same way that I read, at a breakneck pace, as if typing under a million words a minute will let the demons catch me. I write with emotion-filled desperation. I don’t worry about being clever. I leave that for rewrites. Quotes, while fun, are just a small part of my emotional gasoline. I wander into the fumes, strike a match, and just hope make it out alive.
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Without a Notebook
Some people have notebooks they fill with quotes, ones from celebrities, political figures, other writers, even their moms. I’m not one of those people. While I might be momentarily inspired by something I read or hear, it is not lasting. Going back to the same words of encouragement do nothing for me.
I generally find inspiration from new situations and new experiences. Or barring that from favorite books. A notebook filled with “you can do it” only makes me feel worse when I continuously fail. (more…)
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Writing It Down For Later
The Mad Thinker is a Marvel Comics character created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee back in the day. Inspiration is a tricky thing to describe. Kind of like trying to capture scents with a mason jar underwater.
I mean to say that one never knows when something will strike the flint and and an idea will erupt into flaming life. It’s part and parcel of being a writer that one must keep records of lots of things.
Of course one runs across so many things in the Age of the Internets. It used to be that I’d just write stuff down as I came across it when I read something else. It all starts, as these things do, in the beginning. The formative years, when we begin to realize that being an astronaut or a fireman isn’t going to be what we really want to do, is when we find something that really connects the dots. One of the first things I wrote down came from Chris Claremont, the writer of Uncanny X-Men:
“What you do not comprehend is that we are dying from the moment of birth, indeed, from the instant of conception. Creation bears within itself the seeds of its own destruction.
Our lives are finite things. We live our allotted span and are no more. Regardless of what we may do, how hard we try, the best we can hope for is a brief delay of the inevitable. It is sad. Even cruel. But it is our most fundamental reality to be faced and accepted.”
–Colossus, Uncanny X-Men 165 (vol. 1)
That really affected the teenaged me. It was a point of view I hadn’t considered before. It’s something that I have referred to often despite being one of the most overwrought pieces of comic book writing ever. It’s a moment between two people and the feelings are genuine and there are true things said. It’s a philosophy.
It affected me enough to want to be a writer and to, as often as I can, tell the truth as I see it.
As I’ve become more and more a storyteller, I have collected quotes about writing that mean a lot, that keep me moving forward. The Cult of Done has been one of the biggest, most influential pieces, too. I blog about it a lot.
DONE IS THE ENGINE OF MORE.
— Bre Pettis
But then there’s the curmudgeon Harlan Ellison who might sue anyone who quotes him. Still, this bit, from an interview conducted during the release of Dreams With Sharp Teeth (which you should watch often) over at Comic Book Resources, gave me a quote that gets me through every single day:
“You can either seek the approbation of the monkeys or you can continue to produce your art at the level at which you do it best.”
— Harlan Ellison
Since I’ve got a bum ring finger as I type this, I’m going to wrap up with my favorite quote about writing and the process of writing:
“Finish your shit.”
That’s good ol’ Chuck Wendig.
Yeah. So moving from the philosophy of Claremont’s most human character to the foul-mouthed-but-sensitive Wendig, the things that inspire me to write are pretty varied. I have a quote for just about any occasion, should I need something to pull me through a tough spot of writing.
Of course every spot of writing is tough. All those scraps of paper tacked to the bulletin board over my desk are there to distract me from the hard work and at the same time remind me that it’s hard work.
Ah, the life of a writer…
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Quote Collector
I have collected quotes for most of my life. I used to memorize them: lines from movies I watched over and over again as a child until I could quote the whole movie. Later, I would memorize lines from my favorite books that I read over and over. I still can quote a few lines from the Ian Malcolm rants in the book Jurassic Park.
Then I started writing them down. I still have some of those slips of paper in various files and folders in my filing cabinet. At one point, I started an electronic file for favorite quotes. But I’ve switched computers and harddrives since then, so much of my collection has been lost over the years.
I’ve since started storing that stuff online: a place where things don’t get lost as easily (only buried). When I find a quote in a book that I really like, I use Goodreads to keep track of it. They have a huge database with quotes from every book you can imagine, and you can also add your own if you don’t find the particular one you like.
I’ve also started collecting quotations on my own blog: Prospective Writer quotes page. When I find something memorable, whether from a movie, famous person, or friend, I record it there. I also encourage people to add their favorite quotes in the comments, but nobody has taken me up on that as of yet. I’d encourage you to visit my website and do so!
I collect quotes that are anything that I find amusing, profound, inspirational, or just plain beautiful in their construction. So many things in life are experiences we all share, and when someone can perfectly capture that in a few lines, I like collect it so I can go back and relate to it again sometime.
As a writer, I appreciate the crafting of a clever sentence, the capturing of a profound thought, and being reminded of life’s simple truths, so I am compelled to collect these gems as a dragon would hoard a treasure. And as a dragon does, I pull out these gems to admire them often.
I can only hope that throughout my writing career, maybe I can produce a few of these gems, myself, and end up in someone’s collection somewhere.
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Listening for Gold
My old Moleskine notebook. I still carry it around in my backpack in case inspiration strikes. Trying to write as a dozen conversations circle around me is maddening at times. Other times it’s pure gold.
I’m one of those people who prefers to write in complete silence or maybe with some quiet music (sans lyrics), but the pressures of my day job don’t afford me that opportunity very often. Instead, I find myself putting words on a page as the room roars with impromptu meetings, phone conversations, and smack-talk over an occasional game of foosball.
But let’s be honest, listening is what writers are supposed to be doing. If we’re not listening to the world around us, we’re robbing ourselves — and our writing — of one-fifth of our sensory input. How else can we write genuine-sounding dialogue if we don’t pay attention to how people talk?
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Leather-Bound Beauties (I’m Talking About Journals, You Pervs)
I recently watched a video of Stephen King talking to a group of university students. It was a question and answer type of thing, and at one point, the subject of keeping a notebook of ideas came up.
If I’m remembering this correctly (and in the spirit of full disclosure, it’s completely possible I’m not), King said he didn’t have one. He took a survival-of-the-fittest approach when it came to his ideas. If something occurred to him that sounded like a decent story idea, he’d let it rattle around in his head for a while, along with whatever else was in there at the time.
If the idea was persistent enough and kept presenting itself, he’d eventually get around to writing it. It was his way of letting the cream rise to the top.
At this point, I’m going to state the obvious: I am not Stephen King . . . yet. (But I’m comin’ for you, old man. You best be keepin’ a lookout.)
