Tag: Commitment 2014

Braindisk

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No post yesterday, a bit of a let-down: it was a private goal, not a public one, to try to post a little something here every day.  However, to be fair, I do have a decent excuse.

I started this little project on a really terrible week to be taking on an extracurricular activity like my novel.  Our play is in production this week and I’m spending more hours at the school than I could really ever advise any teacher to spend.  This is affectionately known to theater-folk as “hell week”, and to non-theater-folk as “where the hell is my husband week.”  Lots of hours and mental stress make it a terrible time to be taking on anything outside the norm as far as responsibilities go, so choosing to start my novel this week was, um, let’s not mince words, a bonehead move.  Oh, I have this mountain to climb, why don’t I strap this big Goldfinger rock to my back.  Rock-carrying is a thing I’ve always wanted to do.

Regardless, I’m clipping along just fine.  Though I didn’t post, I did get my requisite writing done: 1600 words yesterday, and 1560 today.  I was expressing to my dear wife yesterday how I really don’t want to get boasty or braggy about making my word counts because I know that I’m coasting merrily along in the honeymoon stage where undertaking this thing still seems like a pretty good idea.  That will fade, and I am hoping that when they do I remember to have my dukes up so I can fight through it.  That said, it’s hard not to feel heartened by the progress I’m making.   I’ve got almost 7,000 words in the bag already, which, if we track our maths, is almost 10% of what I want to arrive at when all is said and done.  Again, that’s inflated, and I do not expect to keep up that amount of flow throughout the process, but it’s not bad for 4 days’ work.

I even got a run in yesterday morning, which is always nice for making me feel productive.  It rained on me a little bit, but that doesn’t bother me; in fact, at sixty degrees, a bit of rain on a run now and then is welcome.  Non-runners hear that and think, running’s bad enough in the first place, why make it worse by doing it in the rain?  Of course, many of us are simply broken individuals.  The stuff that most folks would never consider is the stuff that keeps us going.  It reminds me of Calvin’s dad:

calvinandhobbes

I miss that comic so much.

I even, while I was running, had an idea for another project.  It’s stupid.  I once had the big bang explained to me thus: all the matter in the universe collected in a big round disk like a pancake, and at the moment of explosion the matter spun out sideways, bits of stars and planets and galaxies flying off and glomming together as the gravity of the central mass just wasn’t enough to contain them.  In this metaphor my brain is the disk, spinning up to speed and throwing off all these ideas that I will never be able to recover or develop.  Still, better too many ideas than too few.

Going Strong and Extra Long

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I am not sure to what I should attribute my incredibly productive first few days, but I have been incredibly productive and it’s kind of awesome.  The Project is alive and on fire; it’s sprouting extra arms and heads and other appendages that I don’t have words for.  I know better than to think that it will be like this all the way through August, but for the moment, the tide is high and I’m riding that wave.  1600 words yesterday, 1800 words today.  It’s a damn good feeling, balm for my languishing writer’s soul, a cold beer on a hot day.

In my musings on the play as I left it many years ago, there were a lot of criticisms that sprung to mind.  The rambling nature of the way the characters speak for one, the deus-ex-machina-esque nature of the ending, the distinct lack of pyrotechnics.  One critique that never occurred to me, however, was not “he needs a love interest.”  There was simply enough going on in the play that it felt (to me) complete without one.  In the meantime, it was suggested by my dear wife that a love interest would serve the story well.

“Why,” I asked.

“It just does,” she said.

“Why,” I insisted.

“Girls like love stories,” she said.

That makes sense enough, I suppose.  She is a lot smarter than me, after all.  So I thought about how to make the love interest work within the scope of the play as it existed.  And it just didn’t work.  It didn’t make sense to me.  Couldn’t make it jive.  It became part of the reason, I suppose, that I fell away from the project and didn’t come back to it until now; it was a problem I couldn’t fix.  (There I go again, blaming past me for my problems.  That guy really screwed my life up.  Except for the things he got right.  Ahh, I can’t be mad at that guy.)

Now, however, armed with new resolve, new confidence, and new pants (true story, none of the pants from back then fit; yes, that’s me tooting my own horn, because occasionally I need to remind myself of the little things I do that are awesome), I am attacking the problem head-on (apply directly to the forehead).  I am trying, in this grand experiment, to lean into the problems that seem unfixable.  They’re going to come up, and they don’t have to be fixed at the moment they come up.  Love story doesn’t work in the context of the story you wrote?  Create a new context.  Work around it.  Try something new and crazy and different.  So today, the story grew a new character.

I have to be careful to make sure that she’s not a tossed-off perfect creature, but on a first spin she seems like a pretty good fit.  There was a natural place to bring in somebody new anyway; why not make that character a central one?

Lots to think about, lots to write about. The temptation will be to consider the extra writing I’ve gotten done over the last couple days as a credit in the bank and let myself slack off from a day or two. Gotta stomp that down.

Just banging out some words

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(Title Edited so that I can save the totally awesome title “Wordhammer” for a more awesome use later)

Spiraling around the issue of actually putting metaphorical pen to metaphorical paper, I want to take a bit of time today as practice banging out some words.

I’m very close to settling on Accidentally Inspired as the focus for my novel.  When I say very close, I frankly can’t think of what would shake me from it, but I did after all give myself until Monday to officially make that call, so my procrastinating half will happily allow me to put it off until that time or very nearly so.  After all, me from Monday certainly dropped a DonDraper anvil on future me’s head, or at least, will have done by the time he gets around to it.  I get around to it?  Future uses are Fargoers, especially when we refer to them (ourselves) in infuriating 3rd person.  Who would do that?  Your author is as puzzled as anybody.

At any rate, I want to kick around some ideas for AI in a span of about 20 minutes or so.  That will leave me time to prep for my next class coming in.

So, I realize that what the storyline lacks is a real villain.  Sure, the characters that Andy invents at the typermachine (yeah… that happened and I stuck with it) end up working against him, but they are not villains.  They’re not working against him so much as they’re simply working for themselves.  Of course, in noticing that I recall upon myself the notion that there is no good or bad but thinking makes it so; ergo, NO villain should be working against him in the strict sense of acting as an ANTI-Andy, that wouldn’t make sense.  However, the created characters are not operating at goals which stand at cross purposes to Andy.  They want their story to go one way, he wants his story to go another way, they may not agree or be particularly happy about the compromise, but they both WANT A STORY.  It works as a conflict, but the central conflict is an internal one.  His writer’s block.

Not to say that an internal conflict can’t carry the day; certainly it can.  But why not an extra external conflict to muddy the waters?  To spice up the soup?  Chuck would say, probably, if I knew him and were he reading this, why not 4 or 5 more conflicts?  Why not indeed?

So, a villain.  If there’s a villain in the story as it exists already, it’s Andy’s barely-mentioned nemesis Harold Green (or whatever his DonDraper name is; I can’t even remember, which is a testament to how long it’s been since I’ve written and also a testament to how forgettable he was, which is kind of the point – if he’s forgettable then why is he the Fargo there?) who exists outside the action of the play, writing the stories that Andy can’t write, scoring the bonuses Andy can’t score, presumably bedding all the models that Andy can’t bed.  He’s the measuring stick against which Andy measures his … prowess, we’ll say prowess.

So why not make him visible?  Why not bring him into the tangle and allow him to Fargo with Andy up close and personal-like?  Why not allow him to get in there and grab a hot handful of Andy’s scrotum and tack it to the floor?  Why, indeed, not?  (I’ve definitely been reading Chuck’s blog.)  There are moments for it.  It could even be built up to.  First, a taunting phone call as part of a good-natured pissing match between the two of them (good-natured, that is, in Harold’s eyes – Andy wouldn’t be able to stand it, I like that dichotomy).  Then a furious follow-up when he learns that Andy has an opportunity to snake the job from under him.  Then some honest to goodness Fargoery as he attempts to sabotage Andy in the writing of the project.  Making all kinds of crazy noise in the street outside?  Why not.  Planting radios in the air vents to play Hanson at all hours of the day?  Demented.  I love it.

Point is, I think I realized that he’s a perfect opportunity for the story to have a villain that can be reviled and hated and who I can also use as an avatar to give Andy some additional holy Haberdashery to deal with – and let’s face it, if I’m going to expand this thing into a novel, there needs to be more Haberdashery in Andy’s world to make it worth the price of admission.

There, that’s twenty minutes.  Or was it ten?  I think it was ten.  Nonetheless, a villain is a pretty good product for 800 words or so of musing and drivel.  Also a pretty good indicator that I can take hold of the ol’ wordhammer and bang out some stuff if I decide to do it.

Mark me, this is not self-serving wheel-spinning and procrastination.  Well, yes, it is, it’s exactly that.  But I think this idea needs just a bit of ground-laying to really take shape and I’m hoping to accomplish that to give myself a good chance at 1) actually writing and finishing the thing and 2) okay I really don’t have a list of objectives, I just wanted to perhaps lessen the magnitude of that first and only important point by giving it some cohorts on my to-do list.  If there’s just one thing it seems insurmountable.  If there are several things, it’s like a checklist.  Did that.  Working on that.  Gonna do that.  No problem.  Let me try again.

Give myself a good chance of

1) actually writing and finishing the thing

2) having a hot sandwich for lunch

3) pondering penguins in a parade

There.

Percolating

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Mar 5

Non-run frustration is building.  I can feel myself growing tubbier and more sluggish and grumpier.  Just when I thought I could finally say, yeah, I think the heel is really healing, I think things are going to be fine this weekend when I take it out for a test drive, I put pressure on it from the side (by sitting down of all things) and an exquisite sensation of wrongness bloomed in my heel and radiated out through my foot.  Not pain, per se; it certainly hurt, but in less of a “holy god okay let’s not do that particular motion anymore” way and more of a “whoa that was surprising, I wonder if I do the same thing again if it’ll ping like that, hey it does, maybe I’ll not do that again” kind of way.  Maybe just a tweak, but I’d be lying viciously if I said it didn’t have me rattled.  I’m still planning to take a little jog this weekend – probably Saturday – to test myself out again, but I really fear that there’s something serious at stake.  If I’m honest-to-god laid up and unable to run for a span of a couple of months, I don’t know what I’m going to do.  Probably go a bit batty and start flinging poop, but given my recent commitment to writing the first novel over the summer, that may just be a foregone conclusion.

Speaking of that novel, on day one of The Commitment, I was feeling pretty strongly about option C: coming up with a new premise to base the novel around, and saving Accidentally Inspired and Superhero Thingy until I’ve sharpened my teeth a bit on an idea I felt less enamored with.  But yesterday had me leaning back in the direction of Accidentally Inspired, because if I’m trying to sally up to an idea that I haven’t even truly formed yet, then am I not doing myself a disservice?  I love the story of Accidentally Inspired, and I think it’ll make a fine book.  Who cares if it’s not my best work – it’ll still be good (despite being crap by virtue of being my first novel) and more importantly, it’ll keep me driven.  So that’s my leaning.

Nonetheless, ideas for option C are percolating.  MDW suggested a horror story (go figure) about a crazed killer (go figure) in a small town.  Could be interesting.  I asked for clarification: an honest-to-god one-man-band deranged murderer or some kind of monster in the mist?  Naturally she gravitated toward the deranged and monstrous human, rather than the monster.  I suppose there’s more gravitas and relatability in the human, but damned if I’m not feeling the pull of the monster.  Something about a secluded little town, with a horrific and evil Something out there in the dark… echoes of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village perhaps, which I saw once and don’t think I’d see again in preparation for my own story.  There’s something there.  I feel its pull.

A good morning, starting with writing, even if I couldn’t start it with a run.  I won’t call it a perfect substitute but it does fill the void left by a nice pre-dawn run that makes me feel productive and leaves me feeling like, whatever else happens in the day, I have accomplished something before most of the world was even awake.  I wrote today, and that means I by god accomplished something.

In which I make a first post and perhaps overzealously set a summer writing goal

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Nick is two years old.  I forgot to mention that last time; In fact Feb 28 is his birthday.  It didn’t feel like his birthday, though, because we didn’t have anything going on for him on that day.  I suppose it would be more correct to say that I didn’t have anything going on for him that day.  Which is, I further suppose, indicative of one of the problematic ways I look at him.  A selfish way.  A me-oriented way.  Whether he’s two or not, his birthday is his birthday, regardless of what boring adult business I have going on.  He’s a kid.  It’s his job to throw things around and stick his fingers in his food and fling it at the walls and generally to act as a self-contained cell of entropy floating around the house, throwing into disarray everything it brushes up against.  My struggle against the entropy won’t stop it.  I can only contain it for a brief moment before he smashes something else or tosses another stack of bills all over the floor or somehow gets hold of a drink we left on the table and spreads it across the thrice-DonDrapered carpet in the living room.

I got distracted.  Anyway, I’m seeing him through my lens, not his lens.  I don’t know if that’s a bad thing or not, but I literally just this moment in writing these words made myself aware of it, and I can’t make myself unaware of it, so I’m going to try seeing things his way and see if that changes things for me (or him) any.  At any rate, he’s two now, and that’s pretty cool and exciting while also being laden with gravity and making me keenly aware of the fact that I’m not getting any younger over here, myself.

Weekend update, in other news:

Running is still in the ditch.  My heel feels strong enough to run again, but I am going to give it a few more days – probably until the weekend – to make doubly sure that it’s back up to speed before I get out there.  If I start up again and I start having this pain again, I’m afraid it’s going to be doctor time.  In fact, let that not be a fear – it WILL be doctor time.  This is past me shaking a finger at future me, if in fact that’s a future we arrive at.

Writing: I need to engross myself into a project rather than just dancing around the issue and writing inconsequential Sharknado that won’t matter.  Not that a little piece can’t have some good fallout, but it should be supplemental to something rather than trying to stand on its own.  Which is not to say that a side piece can’t stand… you know what I’m saying, don’t you, me?  I’m not going to do anything with the “small stuff” if I don’t have a “big stuff” to carry the day and help me start to build an audience.  So there are three options.

1) Accidentally Inspired.  It works as a book.  The problem: Do I know it too well to have it be a fresh writing experience?

2) Villainy (or whatever I end up calling the superhero thing).  It’s probably a cooler idea, and certainly one that I can expand.  The problem: Might it not be better saved until I’ve cut my teeth and have a bit more confidence?

3) Unknown new project that I haven’t conceived yet.  None of the drawbacks of the first two ideas; it’s perfect!  The problem:  What the hell is the idea?

They say that you have to put deadlines on your dreams, so here’s me setting one.  By next week at this time, I will choose a primary project.  In fact, I’ll go one step further.  Said primary project should be, at the very least, finished – first draft or beyond – by the time school starts back in the Fall.  Bold added for emphasis and so that future me can find this and remember it later, when he would rather slack off.

Ohhh, Sharknado.  I’m going to have to get to work.