Tag: inspiration

Self-Delusion

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You ever notice how much we lie to ourselves?

We lie to ourselves *a lot*.

It’s this weird, insidious thing that we do to let ourselves off the hook for the things we know we should be doing.

And the thing is, we lie to ourselves knowing that the lies are exactly that: lies. We hope that those lies become the truth.

But lies don’t become truth just because you hope they will become truth, or just because you keep telling them to yourself as if they are truth.

How are you lying to yourself?

And are you brave enough to tell yourself the truth?

Creating Should Be Fun

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We all have that image in our mind, right? The haggard writer, stooped with their spine bent over the keys, tumbler of coffee (or something stronger) clutched in spindly fingers, red-rimmed raccoon eyes staring at the page.

Tortured. Tormented.

And you know the thing about stereotypes: there’s always a grain of truth. Sometimes more than a grain. We think of that because we’ve all been there — as you fight to get the story just right, as you push and pull and strive and struggle, you smile less, you agonize more. You hate the work some days and other days it feels like the work hates you right back.

But creating can’t be like that *all* the time. I mean, if the writing is like that *all* the time, why are you doing it?

On a good day, the writing is like turning on the hose on a hot summer day — it’s crisp and it’s clear and it flows without end. It’s almost like magic.

I haven’t had enough good days with my writing lately, and I wonder if it’s not because I was trying to make the wrong project happen. I switched gears today and I recaptured a little of that magic. So if you’re like me — struggling for days, weeks, months with your writing — maybe do yourself a favor and give that project a break. A *little* one, at least. And let your brain work on a project it wants to work on. Let it stretch its legs.

Find that magic again. And if you can’t?

Create new magic.

One Little Step

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2020 broke us.

2021 is following it up strong, so far.

And there’s so much stuff everywhere, all the time, clamoring for our attention. Bad news headlines. Infuriating politics. Frightening developments. And then, at the same time, we all live in our own little tornadoes of uncertainty. Whose job or daily routine hasn’t been shaken up — if not shaken to its foundations — by the events of the past year? Nothing feels certain. Nothing feels dependable.

Every day we’re asked to give more, and every day after that, we’re asked again, as if the previous day’s ask never happened. There’s always more: more to do, more to think about, more to be responsible for.

And it’s easy — amidst all that “more” — to get overwhelmed. To see all that clutter and pressure and stuff and think I’ll never get through it. To fall into that dread: that the tasks are too big, the obstacles too impassable. Dread turns to despair. Despair turns into inaction. And inaction makes everything that was merely bad before become catastrophic.

How do we get past these things?

Take one step. Just one. A tiny step forward, whether that’s a step toward a goal or a step around an obstacle or just a step away from the dread and despair. And you don’t let inaction overtake you, don’t let despair define you. You take a step, even if it feels tiny and insignificant, because nothing else happens without that first step. One step follows the next. Once you’ve taken that step, you take another. And then another. And then you look behind you and you realize that you have made progress, you did accomplish something, even if the steps themselves felt like nothing.

There’s this story I saw a few years ago about the world’s largest beach cleanup. Mumbai had one of the dirtiest, most litter-stricken beaches in the world. Plastic and garbage and junk as far as the eye could see, and nothing to be done about it. Cleaning it up was unheard of: an impossible task. Until one person decided to get out there and start cleaning it up.

And when that person stepped up, so did others. And others. A little bit at a time. One person providing inspiration to another. The efforts cascaded. And within a year, the place had been transformed.

On the left, a photograph of part of Versova beach taken on August 6, 2016. On the right is an image of the beach tweeted on May 20, 2017.
On the left, a photograph of part of Versova beach taken on August 6, 2016. On the right is an image of the beach tweeted on May 20, 2017. (via CNN)

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Step forward. Do something. Do anything.

Self-Published at 8

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My kid wrote a comic book the other day.

He does this from time to time — the impulse just strikes him and he wants to tell a story, and he’ll grab a bunch of white paper and sharpies and markers and go on a writing and drawing spree for a couple hours, then come away with this concoction of hastily-scribbled, choppily-illustrated wonder.

This one, being in a holiday frame of mind, was about Santa Claws.

That’s not a misspelling, you see — in addition to being creatively inclined, the kid also has an affinity for the macabre.

“You thought Christmas was a happy season?” The book begins, ominously.

In his story, to summarize, Santa Claus is attacked by a Clawster (what that is, I have no idea, and upon further discussion, I’m not sure the kid does either). This infects him with a deadly virus that turns him into Santa Claws, who goes on a Tarantino-esque roarin’ rampage of revenge, attacking elves (tearing one in half!) and savaging his reindeer (poor Rudolph!) before being attacked by a SWAT team. (“PREPARE WAR”, Santa Claws says, in a quote from the book.)

This does not deter Santa Claws, however, because his claws are able to slice ‘n’ dice the bullets they shoot at him. The SWAT team comes up short, so it takes the army to subdue him, at which point they learn that the Clawster was from the Civil War, somehow.

Merry Christmas.

(I’d take a picture, but he gave it to my dad as a birthday present — because after hearing him read it to me, I told him his grandfather would love to hear it. )

I tell you all that not to try to brag that the kid’s story is awesome or anything (I mean, as a parent, I’m over here gushing about it. Objectively? …There are some plot holes.).

I tell you that instead to point out just how awesome it is to be a kid. Here I’ve been agonizing over this writing thing for years. One finished novel (unpublished), one drafted but un-edited novel (trunked), and a third in late-stage edits (out for review with some trusted critics). Endless revisions. Long-Dark-Tea-Times-of-the-Soul wondering whether my drivel is any good or will ever come to anything.

This kid has an idea, tosses it off in a couple hours, and starts shopping it around the same day — and then doesn’t think about it again.

Funny that from my self-doubting, self-flagellating self could come such a font of unabashed abandon, such impervious confidence.

I need some of whatever he’s having.

Out, out, damned line

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The more I write, the more I think about the craft of writing, and the more I think about the craft of writing, the more I think about how badly I screwed up by not thinking about it more when I was just starting.

Of course, when I was just starting, I hadn’t thought about it all that much, so I couldn’t have done otherwise… and yeah, thoughts like that are ultimately pretty useless.

The point of this is that I’ve got this story idea that I’ve been kicking around for a few years now and I’ve just started actually putting words to paper (or, y’know, words to pixels or whatever, you know what I mean) on it, and … I mean, the idea is nifty and all, but… okay, I have to digress further.

With my other stories, it sort of felt like, from the premise, the story just wanted to get up and go. Like the conflict started up and took off immediately, like a cat startled out of slumber by a zucchini squash.

netflix and chill GIF

With this one, there’s less of that immediate impulse to action. So it feels like the story needs something. It needs guidance. Or, I dunno, maybe it’s not fully formed yet and it needs more time to incubate.

So I spent my session today doing something I’ve never done — in advance, anyway — for a story: outlining it.

That’s right, I went back to high school and I made an outline.

The outline sucks, it’s vague as heck and it reads like every action / spy / thriller movie you’ve ever heard of, but y’know, it’s an outline. And once I had it down, I started fleshing it out with possibilities.

And man, it’s weird. Because in my other work, I usually don’t plan all that much. I just strap a lead on the story and try to hold on while it rushes off to wherever it’s gonna rush off to. But what I noticed is that, in my other stories, they end up wandering around, feeling lost in the middle.

I don’t want to get lost on this one. So I’m trying something new.

Will it work? I don’t have a clue.

Anyway, here’s another cat gif, because cat gifs are awesome and it’s Friday and that’s awesome.

cat attack GIF