Year: 2014

One-Month-iversary

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The blarg is a month old!

*pops champagne poppers*

*cranks up the stereo*

*trips over a cat*

I’ve been a capital-w Writer for a month now.  Actually, a month yesterday, but WHO’S COUNTING?  (I am, and EVERY WORD AND EVERY DAY COUNTS)

So, what do I have to show for myself?  Let’s take stock!

I have completed over 28,000 words on The Project.  This fact alone is both overwhelming and overwhelmingly frustrating.  Overwhelming in that I have well and truly jumped into this thing with both feet and given myself a better start than I could hope for.  When I set my goal of 900 words per day, the truth is I felt it was a little ambitious, but I’ve found that with only a few exceptions, as long as I give myself the time in which to get it done, 900 words is not enough for me.  My id-writer is not satisfied stopping at 900, which led me to the super secret goal I mentioned before – and I even make that goal most days.  So the progress is phenomenal.  When you add in the (almost) daily word count I squeeze off here at the blarg, it adds up to a heck of a lot of writing, which means a heck of a lot of practice, which (by virtue of the commutative property or some sharknado – I don’t do maths okay) means a heck of a lot of improvement.  Okay, probably not a heck of a lot.  But if you’ll *never* get better if you *don’t* practice, then if you practice *all* the time then you must get at least a *little* better.  So hopefully I’m getting better.  Still gotta work on those adverbs, though.  But I let the real rules like that slide over here.  Put your feet up.  Throw your peanut shells on the floor.  That’s what we have the army of roombas for.

What’s that?  No army of roombas yet?  Pick up those fargoing shells.

So the progress is stunning, but the partially-OCD side of my brain is irked beyond measure at coming so close to thirty-thousand words for the month and not making it.  And yeah, I *could* go for it tonight, but I’m just not going to.  I accomplished some good writing today and I need to let it marinate before I go after the next scene.  Like a fine wine or a good bowel movement, you just don’t rush this stuff.  That’s not an excuse, that’s just good business.  I don’t know what THAT means, but I know that after this blarg, more work is not something that’s going to be happening.  Spring Break is officially on, which at one time in my life would have meant a lot of imbibing, but like so many other things in my life, I’m just too old for that now.  All it means these days is a bit of relaxation, which is, to be fair, welcome and overdue.

And the blarg!  Apparently I’ve made thirty steaming posts of drivel here, which is well above what I had even planned to write.  Given that I’m unable to keep from going on at length on virtually any topic — even when I start out not knowing what I want to write about, I still end up with more than I intended to say about it — you can peg those posts at a conservative average of 500 words apiece, and that’s really really conservative – this post, for reference, is already past 500 and showing no signs of slowing.  So the commutative property (shut up, I don’t do maths) tells me that 30 posts at 500 words makes an additional 15000 words of non-project writing.  Probably closer to 20000, but we’ll call it 15000 and be joyful; fifteen-thousand words of off-topic, pipe-cleansing ramble.  Sidenote: WordPress gives me happy little notifications when things happen (somebody new liked your post!  somebody left a comment!  you left the oven on!), one of which is meeting your posting goal for whatever period you desire.  The fastest posting goal you can set is one post per week.  So I get a charge out of the cheerful little “you met your posting goal for the week!” on Monday evening when the week is just getting started.  Hooray, “achievements”?

And let me not forget that enmeshed in those 30 posts are five (hopefully, by the weekend, six) entirely unrelated short stories running the gamut from weird to dark to depressing (seriously, why can’t I write a happy short story?) which I also can’t complain about.  Each one is about 1000 words of brain-stimulating, boundary-stretching weirdness, helping me to write outside the box that The Project locks me into.  Not that I feel boxed in with the novel — far from it — but the stories help me to envision other projects beyond the edge of this one.  And to me, they work well enough that I feel hope that those other projects can be as good as this one (which hopefully assumes this one’s any good to begin with?!)

Finally, WordPress gives me a handful of more or less meaningless statistics which are nonetheless fun to noodle over.  It turns out I’ve racked up thirty subscribers to the blarg here.  Given that only a handful of those are folks I know personally, that means that at least twenty people out there have stumbled onto my little pile of drivel and liked it enough to click a button that makes it a part of their daily-ish reading.  While a click of a button is not a big deal, the fact that people who know me only through my writing like that writing enough to invite more of my writing gives me the warm fuzzies.  And the positive feedback from other writers is a solid kick in the hindparts to boot (see what I did there?).

So.

One month.  Twenty-eight thousand words of Pure Project Product.  Fifteen to twenty thousand words of Blargle Fargle Wargle.  Five not-totally-craptastic short stories.  Thirty subscribers.  I don’t see any way to parse that information that doesn’t add up to March having been one pretty goldfinger solid start down the path to capital-w Writing.

Thanks for reading.  Pavorisms will continue after these commercial messages.

More Quotes, More Inspirational Crap, and I’m not very good at writing about music

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Yesterday’s brush with a motivational quote that speaks to me put me in mind of another one that more directly influenced my recent onset of brain fever, AKA throwing down the ink-gauntlet and declaring myself a writer.  Incidentally, the quote is from a band, which is double dumb on me because I typically profess not to get all wound up in the lyrics to songs.  In my defense, how can you?  I listen to the radio every day and wish I didn’t because the songs are so literarily (yep, I did it) barren that it hurts my English teacher brain.  And yeah, okay, I’m sure there are bands out there dropping crazy good poetry penned by angels, but I’m over thirty; I don’t have time to go hunting out new music like I did in my younger and more formative years.  Basically I turn on Pandora and let some music I’ve never heard and never will again wash over my subconscious.

But Pandora’s responsible for this, and I do enjoy Pandora.  I can count on one hand the number of full CDs I’ve bought in the last several years, and I need less hands than that to count the CDs I’m glad I bought.  I also just realized that I’m totally aging myself by referring to it as a CD even at this point.  Does anybody buy CDs?  What do you call it when you buy it online now?  An album?  Sharknado, I’m too old to care about the lingo.

ANYWAY.  AWOLNATION.  The caps are the band’s, not mine.  That’s the band and they’re responsible for the quote.  I don’t know things about music.  I can’t write about it.  They’re best known for Sail, which came out in 2010, and is not the song in question.  Ugh, I’m getting sidetracked.  This is not about the music.  It’s about the words, which are usually at odds with the music.  In fact with AWOLNATION I think the lyrics usually are at odds with the music, which may in fact be the point.  Blarg, there I go off the road again.

Anyway, they have a song called “Kill Your Heroes”.  The video for it is a crackup, riffing on good old Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, and the message is brilliant.  The song as a whole isn’t bad either, but what really gets me is the line at the end of the first verse.

“Never let your fear decide your fate.”

This writing thing, for me, has been a thing that I’ve wanted to try for a long time, but well, I’ve always been afraid of failing.  Afraid that people won’t like what I put out there, that I will never find any measure of success at it, that it will be a waste of my time.  The fact is, those fears may be well-founded.  I may never have success at it, people may not like what I have to offer, and if that be the case, then it sure may turn out to be a colossal waste of my time.

But then, it won’t be, really, because I’m having an absolute ball just writing the novel and writing the blarg here for my audience of a handful (so far!).  And I may not come to anything, and in a few years maybe I’ll have burned out on this and moved on to some other crazy obsession (Civil War Reenactments have always fascinated me.  That’s not a joke.).

But at least this time, I won’t let my fear of the thing keep me from trying the thing.

 

1350 more words today, and the train keeps on a-rollin’.

Time Will Pass.

Pavowski2 Comments

GOD.

That last post is depressing the haberdashery out of me, and I’m afraid I just can’t let it stand. I’m not going to bed with that kind of negativity bouncing around in my skull. (Yeah, I’m already prepping for bed at 8:30, WHO WANTS Some?!) (I totally do not want some. Please just let me go to sleep.)

Here, then, is a little bit of positivity and productive inspiration. I discovered this quote about a year ago, and I guess it built a little rat-hole in my brain. It really resonates with my current obsession. I rediscovered it over at Doyce Testerman’s website and I’m stealing it for posterity.

image

Doyce Testerman, btw, is the second most British librarian-slash-villain name ever, superceded only by Benedict Cumberbatch. Heart Sherlock.

Please Shut Up

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I really wanted to find something I could blarg about this evening.  I really, tried hard.

But I am tapped.

I don’t really know why.  Today was a day at work much like any other day.  I hammered out a pretty solid 1300 words and change.  Felt the flow pretty strongly, too; no piddling around, no aimless wandering to get the juices flowing, just down to work and kept smashing away at it.  Like a rock.  Left myself well poised for tomorrow’s session as well, a trick I’m learning to embrace and enjoy.  But that’s it.  I keep searching for off topic ideas to write about and I’m coming up empty.

Actually, I do have something to say, but it’s a little preachy, so I’m going to keep it brief.

Parents, teach your kids to appreciate the value of silence.  Take some time to teach them that not every fargoing minute of their existence has to be filled with distraction, with music, with jokes, with youtube videos, with gossip, with dancing, with ANYTHING.  There are times for all of those things. Those are good things a lot of the time.  But for god’s sake, let the silence in and enjoy it every now and then.

As a teacher, nay, as a parent, NAY, as a HUMAN BEING, it’s so frustrating to see the scores and scads of children — who are about to become adults! — who, when faced with a few minutes of quiet reading or study time, reach immediately for headphones, or can’t help but whisper (or just flat out talk) to a friend, or drum on their desks, or find ANYTHING TO DO EXCEPT KEEP SILENT AND FOCUS.  I get it.  They’re kids.  School is not the thing they really want to be doing with the day.  That’s okay.  I’m not faulting them for that.  But I think there’s something wrong when you can’t simply let yourself be alone with your thoughts for a little while.  When you can’t just turn off the music, put the goldfinger phone down, and actually listen to somebody else talk for a little while.  I don’t even mean me.  Just listen for a moment to process and consider the thoughts of another human being.

And the talking, ye gods.  They talk at each other and past each other but it’s a rare moment where any of my students will actually say anything to one another.

And yeah, I know, giving voice to these thoughts makes me sound hideously old and tired and get-off-my-lawn-ish.  I can’t help it, and I’m not sure if I want to.  Because if a kid can’t stop and think, how is he any better than an animal?  What’s the point of tens of thousands of years of evolution if we’re going to de-sensitize the one organ that gives us an advantage over every other creature on earth?

Okay, the lament for our future is over for now.  Pardon my soapbox.  I’ll just close the door as you leave and cry inside for a while.

TOYS.

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I am obsessed with toys.

Not the toys that my toddler leaves strewn about the house.  Those haberdasheryspawned contraptions of plastic and plush and cacophony without cease are the stuff of my nightmares, and I’m convinced that, when I have shrugged off this mortal coil, if hell is waiting for me, then at least one level of it will be a simple living room floor covered with toys that, much like the severed heads of the hydra, only spawn more toys when I try to clean them up.  An ever-growing, inescapable bramble patch of sharp-edged Legos waiting for my tender underfoot, a never-flagging symphony of bells and xylophones and singing woodland creatures.

Ahem.  Not those toys.

I’m talking about adult toys.  NO NOT THOSE ADULT TOYS.  Toys for grown folks.

The problem is, they don’t really make toys for grown folks.  There’s a toy section at Target (Yeah, Target, because FARGO WAL-MART), but it’s for kids.  Toys for grown folks underwent some serious branding a long time back and are now known as “accessories” or “programs” or “electronics” or whatever other title the little odds and ends are for whatever fascinating little squirrel-hole of a hobby you find yourself falling down.  My holes are reserved for things like running and writing and watching movies and maybe I should rethink the phrasing of this sentence.

I should make something clear at the outset here.  I’m a packrat.  It’s awful.  I love stuff.  I really do.  The American credo of getting as much as you can (that’s a thing, right?) has found a happy little home in my brain and I feed it at every opportunity I get.  I find a hobby, or a thing that I love, and I buy all kinds of little useless crap that has anything to do with it.  I’ve got a storage tub full of decks of cards from when I went through a card tricks phase a few years back.  I’ve got boxes in the garage filled with little action figures (THEY’RE NOT DOLLS, SHUT UP) from cartoons (okay, anime) I watched in college.  I’ve got dusty plaques and trophies from when I was less than ten years old.  No less than four sets of serious-ANTZ darts (because, yeah, darts were a thing for me for a while) — the ones that come with their own little carrying case and you have to screw the whole shebang together, feathers and all.  A personalized goldfingered bowling ball from when I was in a bowling league at the age of fifteen.  It’s not memorabilia.  There’s no sentimental value.  It’s my STUFF, man, and I’m a-keepin it.

So I hoard stuff.  And my wife hoards stuff, too.  Like opposite ends of two magnets, we attracted one another, except that like magnets would repel each other, and we’re the same, so the metaphor kind of falls apart at this stage, but sharknado, I’m on a roll here.  Our garage is not a place we like to show off to people.  It’s a repository of our shames.

Because, make no mistake, there is bountiful shame.  I know that, on many levels, it’s ridiculous to have all this stuff.  Who the haberdashery needs thirty decks of playing cards?  And yet, I can’t get rid of it.  Even as I profess to strive for minimalism and simplification in my more recent years, the demons of my past keep working behind my back.  Organizers to decrease desk clutter?  Yes, I’ll take two, and try them for a week, and then put them on the pile of clothes that I keep meaning to donate out in the garage.  A fancy new bag to keep my job stuff organized as I go back and forth from home to work and back?  I’ll take one in blue AND black.  One will live in the back of my car; I will call him Tim, and feed him empty tin cans and drive-thru receipts.  BECAUSE I KEEP THOSE TOO.

New hobbies?  New toys.  With running, it was new shoes, the soles lined with the down of angels to comfort my delicate feet, new socks made of synthetic fibers to absorb shock and sweat (socks that actually care which foot you put them on – seriously, I had never seen socks emblazoned with tiny L’s and R’s before I took up running), a fancy watch which can triangulate my position and tell the government (I mean me) how fast I ran that mile, what neighborhood I ran it in, and how long I was meeting with the terrorist operatives in the woods (wait, what?), new shirts woven of mystical threads to provide legendary comfort and style, hats, gloves, shoes, headphones, all of which are covered with little reflecty bits to ensure that I am not struck by oncoming traffic whilst I’m out pounding pavement when the rest of the world slumbers.  They say running is cheap — all you need is your shoes and you can head out the door.  The romanticism of that idea drew me in.  I shudder to think how much money I’ve “saved” by taking up running rather than or instance shelling out for a gym (which I would not have gone to, that’s off topic, STAY ON TOPIC).

Now, writing!  I am new to Serious Writing (about as new as this blog is, which is to say, not quite a month in), so my list of purchases is still rather short.  BUT NOT NONEXISTENT.  I am typing these very words on a spiffy new bluetooth keyboard with my tablet (the bluetooth keyboard actually makes the tablet totally decent to write on). I bought some e-books, which DON’T COUNT because they don’t take up space, but yeah they still count because they are still representative of my inner slobbering consumerist packrat self.  A new bag, to facilitate carrying the tablet and keyboard as well as my other stuff going back and forth between work and home (yes, I got a new bag a couple paragraphs ago, just… okay?)

And apps!  Holy schlamoly, there are so many apps out there for writers, it’s a wonder that writers haven’t buried the world in the pages produced by all the productivity they’ve gotten out of all these apps. (Because a thing that writers definitely do NOT do is buy all these toys, read all these things, download all these apps, and proceed NOT to write anything of value, right?  Right??)  Dictionary apps and thesaurus apps and blogging apps and word count apps and timer apps to make sure you work undisturbed until time is up and apps that shut down the Internet while you’re working and apps that do all of these and also pour you a nice cup of coffee, just kidding, unless you’re reading this from the year 2020 because surely by then there will be an app for that, right?

My favorite at the moment is a little word processor called WriteMonkey, a stripped-down plain text editor which aims to eliminate distractions and allow you to focus on your writing without the urge to check e-mails, surf the web, watch an hour’s worth of Mental Floss videos… to be fair, the urges are still there, but the program blacks out everything else on your screen, theoretically making it more difficult for you to indulge your urges.  Out of sight, out of mind, and all that. It operates pretty well as advertised.  But the big dumb draw of it for a distractable donut like me is that you can toggle on these little keyboard clicks to make it sound (and, if you’re really into it, look) like you’re typing on an old-school typewriter, complete with a cheerful ding when you hit return.  I know, it’s dumb.  But it sucks me in, man, like a brand-new Dyson.

I punched out a solid 1400 words today to the soft ratatat of classic typewriter keys today, and left myself well-poised to jump right into Tomorrow’s writing (getting started is the toughest part).  Who knows how long these new toys will hold my focus, but I’m gonna keep working them as long as they’re working.

So.  Many.  Things.