Tag: inspiration

Some Unsolicited Advice for Anybody Making a Life Change (a reflection on 100 posts)

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About a month ago I saw a video on YouTube from Numberphile (okay, the secret is out, I’m a nerd and I sometimes watch videos about math on YouTube when I have nothing better to do).  It’s a fascinating little examinaton of the methods we use for counting and it explores what our everyday interactions would be like if we had twelve fingers instead of ten.  (Spoiler alert — counterintuitively, numbers and computations and especially measurements and conversions get simpler by factors of oh-my-god-numbers-hurt-my-brain.)  You can check it out below if you’re so inclined.  They make some fascinating videos if, like me, you’re fascinated withthe way math impacts us even if we’d like to pretend it doesn’t.

But this isn’t a post about math, not really.  It’s just a little reflection.   Now, in the scheme of things, even though one hundred seems like a big deal, it’s an arbitrary number, which becomes incredibly obvious after watching a video like the one I linked above.  Nevertheless, it’s a significant number because we’ve all agreed that it is; we measure years in decades and centuries, we have the metric system (which nobody uses, PFF, SILLY REST OF THE WORLD), and our currency is nothing without hundreds.  Ultimately, however, it’s just one way out of many to count stuff, and as we all know, everything is relative and there is no best anything.

I’m hung up on one hundred today, though, because I recently passed the 100 post mark here at Pavorisms.  I’m pointing it out, not to toot my own horn or to massage my ego, but honestly just so that I can have another landmark to look back at.  Landmarks matter because they show us where we’ve been, but perhaps more importantly, so that we can tell other people where they’re going.  This particular landmark is a pretty monstrous one for me.

I started the blarg here the very week I decided I was going to finally get around to writing a novel.  It wasn’t meant to be a major undertaking; just a spot for me to reflect on the writing I was doing on the novel and to stretch my legs on writing some non-level fiction vis-a-vis my short pieces.  It wasn’t a big deal, but I committed to it just like I committed to writing the novel.  Now it’s four months later, and I’ve nearly finished the novel and I have made over a hundred posts here at the blarg.

That’s one hundred times I’ve sat down to write outside of working on the novel.  That’s one hundred times I’ve found something to say even on those days when I started out thinking I didn’t really have anything to say.  (Spoiler alert: I still don’t have much to say, but I do have fun saying it.)  The point is, I found ways to write even when I didn’t think I could.  I kept writing even when I was exhausted from writing.  I kept writing even when I was sick to death from the thought of writing.

My dad told me many, many years ago — and it’s a piece of wisdom that I’ve repeated many times throughout the years to myself and others — that you can do just about anything for a few weeks.  And I’ve found that to be pretty much true.  Anything you end up doing — however unpleasant, taxing, difficult or challenging it might be — you can muscle through it for a few weeks.  You can force yourself to get up at three in the morning for a terrible job and not crash for a few weeks.  You can try out a new diet and not hate it for a few weeks.  You can give up beer, chocolate, sex, or whatever other guilty pleasure you might have for a few weeks.  But there comes a point beyond which muscling through it cannot carry you.  A point that, for better or worse, you have to find a deeper drive to get past.  You can keep working the job that gets you up at three AM, but you’ll have to give up staying up to watch late night TV.  You can stay on your diet, but you’ll have to find replacements for the food you’re giving up, and make lifestyle adjustments so that you don’t keep craving the old stuff.  You can stay off your vices but you have to really know why you’re staying off — giving them up for Lent isn’t going to keep you clean.

My point is, muscling through can get you to the brink.  It can get you through the salty first days of something and show you what life is like with this new change you’re trying out.  But muscling through won’t get you through the days when you’re so exhausted you can’t bear to think about your three AM job, your diet, or your sudden lack of cigarettes.  What gets you through then?  For me, it’s an eye on the prize.

I tried running three different times in my life.  Twice I did it for a few months and then gave it up — it was too hard.  Two years ago I started it up again (for the last time) because my son had just been born and I wanted to work to stay healthy for him, and I am still going strong two years later, despite some serious setbacks of late.

Now, I’m writing because I have always felt that I could tell a decent story but never tested myself.  Well, I may still be in the muscling through stage, but I have a hundred blarg posts and almost ninety thousand words banked on the novel that say this is a habit I just might be able to stick with.

Jeez.  I start off talking about math and then I get all preachy.  Could I meander any more?  The point is this (and I write this, both for anybody thinking of trying out writing or trying out anything new as well as for myself when I lose gumption somewhere down the line, as I know I will): Making a change is about two major turning points.  The first is when you decide to do the thing.  People think that’s the hard part, but I don’t think so.  Look at the numbers for gym membership sales in January for your evidence: making the commitment is — I don’t want to say easy — not the hard part.  The hard part comes when you’re no longer riding the high of just having started, you no longer have the accolades of people clapping you on the back and saying “good for you.” When you find yourself in the trenches, covered in mud and blood and tears and sweat, clinging to your rifle like it’s the only good thing left in the world and you’re faced with deciding whether to press on through even more mud and blood and heartache and pain or to cash in your chips and go back to the easier life you were leading before.

So pick a milestone.  Shoot for it.  “900 words today.”  And write it.  “Run three miles today.”  And run them.  And then go for a bigger milestone.  “6000 words this week.”  And write it.  “Run twenty miles this week.”  And run them. And grow and evolve and improve and keep changing and don’t get comfortable and keep setting new milestones and enjoy the landmarks as you sail past them and leave them in the rearview.

If I can do it, you can do it.

I’m talking to you, Future Me.

 

One Door Closes

Pavowski3 Comments

I’m nearing completion of the first draft of Accidentally Inspired.  It should be done this week.  And it leaves me wondering: what the fargo do I do when it’s over?

Like Inigo Montoya after slaying the six-fingered man, I fear I may run out of steam a bit once the Project is over.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned from running, it’s that momentum is key.  He who stops might never get started again.  Succumb to allowing myself time off and next thing I know I’m sitting on that draft that I never did anything with, sucking down more Cheetos and licking the orange dust off my fingers instead of getting it all over my keyboard.  Except that in this example, getting the cheezdust on my keyboard would be something that’s desirable.  Y’know, because that’d mean I’m using it, and otherwise I’m just a sloth with Cheeto fingers.

I’ll allow myself a little time to decompress after finishing this draft.  Writing it, as much as I’ve enjoyed the process, has been taxing and exhausting in some ways I never imagined.  Be it slogging through endless hours of drafting characters who, to be honest, I’m growing a bit tired of, or writing into the wee hours of the night because I can no longer find time during the day, I’m beat.  I feel a bit like Forrest Gump after five or six trips running across the country: I’m tired, and I think I’ll go home now.

So a LITTLE bit of time off, but not so much time that I slip into the warm comfortable Snuggie of NotWriting.  Because as comfortable and comfortING as that Snuggie is, I recognize it now for the deathtrap it is.  The deathtrap that hoovers up the creative energy I should have been venting for the last ten years of my life and devours it like a great Sarlacc pit in the desert, where it withers and dies and doesn’t give birth to interesting stories or make me feel wonderfully productive and interesting or make me rich and famous (because that’s likely in this path I’m trying to walk, right?  RIGHT???).  No, as inviting as that Snuggie is, I will be doing my damnedest to let it collect dust and spiderwebs in the garage, because even though I’ve spent the past four months writing my butt off, I feel like there are miles to go before I wake.

As the proverbial door closes (okay, it’s not like the door closed because I took that door and explored the fargo out of it, but let’s pretend the metaphor holds), what proverbial window stands open in front of me?  It’s hard to say.  I’ve got the other novel ideas that I was considering back in March when this jolly parade first lurched like a herd of turtles into motion.  I’ve got a not-insignificant little collection of Flash Fiction which I’ve dutifully written almost every week; many of those stories are itching to be expanded, fleshed out and stitched into a living, breathing and terrifying Pavlak’s Monster if I can wrangle a bolt of lightning into their harvested parts.  And of course, after a bit of time passes, I’ll need to start on the monolithic task of editing AI, which means I’ll need to sharpen my bonesaws and reinforce my sledgehammers to start smashing that thing to pieces to put it back together Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger-like.  Or, who knows?  Perhaps I’ll be struck with a new bolt of inspiraton, like a lonely sheep in a lightning storm.

Um… pardon me for a second.

Sheep gets struck by lightning, develops super powers, bites farmhand, farmhand develops superpowers, gets the girl, saves the earth, knits a lovely lightning-imbued sweater, rides his shorn lightning-sheep into the sunset.

Okay, I’m back.

Anyway, if you’ve read my previous posts you might know that I’m a tremendous fan of Douglas Adams, and anytime I can compare myself or my work to his stories I end up feeling in a better way about myself, so here it is.  In the latter phases of his last (not really the last) book of his Hitchhiker’s Guide trilogy (not really a trilogy), the hero finds himself on a faraway planet viewing God’s last message to his creation.  He sees it, sighs, and says, essentially, “well, that’s that.”  And goes home.  Of course, Adams decided he hadn’t had enough after all and wrote another book after that.  But I feel very much like that.  Here I am, novel nearly finished, and there’s a message just over the horizon in flaming letters forty feet high that I can’t quite make out yet, but I have the sneaking suspicion that whatever message those letters carry, it won’t fill me with the deep spiritual calm and satisfaction that this little endeavor of mine was worth doing, and it’s done now, so now I can rest.  It probably won’t mean anything at all, in keeping with my little philosophy on this site: “Things don’t always have to mean things.”  But it’ll be there, and I’ll see it, and then I’ll have to find something else to do.

I’ll be on the lookout for any windows that happen to be popping open in my near vicinity.  Or maybe I’d be better off setting some charges and blowing down a wall.

Any fellow writers out there have advice on how to tackle this mounting sense of… I dunno, fear? dread? exhilaration? aimlessness?  Whatever it is that comes with “finishing” (yeah, it’s not even really nearly almost finished) a project?

Somebody Greased the Wheels

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The words came easy yesterday, easier than they have in weeks.  I wish I could say it’s because I feel confident in my ending, but I can’t.  I still don’t 100% know how the dharma thing is going to end.  I mean, basically, I have the chain of events, but as for the ins and outs, how the characters will react, what will become of them… it’s all up in the air like a bunch of chainsaws at the end of a suicidal juggler’s act.

That said, I had a flow going, and I’m not one to look a gift horse in the beak — that’s a good way to get your face bitten off.  Nor am I one to complain about having an easy writing session, especially when I’ve really struggled lately.  To what can I attribute yesterday’s flow?

I think it’s because, here in the closing moments of the story, there’s a bit of a return to form.  The main character is back on his quest, the supporters are back in place doing what they need to do, and the villains have been more or less dealt with.  Conflicts resolved, the story can proceed happily in the way that it wants to.  It’s all that conflict that gets in the way of just letting things happen.  DAMN YOU CONFLICT.  Except, the ego-writer reminds me, conflict is the sustenance of the story, so even though I’m wrapping the story up now, that doesn’t mean I can hop off the conflict-train to hurt-town.  Incidentally, I spent the evening mulling it over and I spent this morning’s run kicking around the moment where I left off last night and suddenly the last bit of conflict came to me.  Something about the heat and the fatigue and the rivers of sweat running down my face triggered the perfect last hurrah for the story’s conflict.  Conclusion?  All writers should run.  Alternate conclusion?  Running solves every problem.  Alternate alternate conclusion?  It’s fargoing hot outside and I’m a little baked, there is no alternate alternate conclusion.

As long as I stay on track (and, against all odds and expectations, I’ve stayed perfectly on track throughout this entire process), the first draft will be done in about a dozen more writing sessions.  A dozen!  It almost seems too close to put a bow on the events of a story, too immediate to properly process.  Like a sudden cinder-block wall on the highway, it looks like I’m going to plow right into it before I can get to where I’m going.  But I think that’ll be okay.  Rather too much than too little, and god knows how much the draft will change when I get into the editing phase.

I feel like my words of late about the novel betray a sense of melancholy about finishing the book.  Well, “finishing.”  My laser-beam focus since April has been to get the first draft done, and with the achievement of that (I just scared myself a little, considering it a fait accompli) and in that sense, I am finishing.  And I do feel a bit of sadness, a bit of aimlessness, a bit of my-nemesis-is-dead-what-will-I-fight-for-now emptiness creeping in.  But I don’t think that will last.  I look back over what I’ve accomplished in the last few months and I realize that the act of writing no longer intimidates me like it once did.  I have ideas for books and plays that I am just bursting to write, the only challenge when this one is all said and done will be deciding what I set my laser sights on next.

 

Chasing Toddlers

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I write a lot about how parenting is a pretty raw fargoing deal.  That’s because it is.  You never work so hard for so little appreciation in your life as when you’re parenting a toddler.

I’ve written about how kids are basically black holes, about how I no longer have the freedom even to move around my own house anymore, about how they made me ruin forever my cool by buying a minivan… it goes on.  It was pointed out to me by a loyal reader (*cough*totallynotmywife*cough*) that all this ragging on the parenting life makes it seem like I don’t enjoy it.  And while, sure, okay, there are certainly moments when I long for that simple childless existence again — a time when I didn’t have to live in fear of some sharp-ended plastic doohickey left by the toddler sticking up into my tender underfoot, when I could rest my hand on the coffee table and not have it come away sticky, a time when I could close the door and enjoy a nice deuce in peace — on the whole I really love it.  Being a parent just has a way of filling me with this sense of accomplishment, happiness, and… I dunno… rightness.

That being said, some moments just have a way of refining all that general goodness to a razor-sharp, crystal-clear, shot-to-the-gut point that I could almost forget the week we spent in February washing baby bedsheets EVERY DAY because he was pooping huge quantities of what looked like, but did not smell like, chicken salad.  I could almost forget the screaming fit he has every night when I leave him in bed for the night, his betrayed little toddler eyes welling with tears as I close the door on him and leave him with his nightmares (of course, he passes out two minutes later, but those two minutes really hurt the heart).

I had one of those redeeming moments yesterday.  Read More »

Milestones, or Reflections on Staying Up Past Bedtime On A School Night

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Milestones.

Milestones to the left of me, milestones to the right of me, milestones keep falling on my head.

Shall I count the ways?

The novel is at almost 80%, which means it’s time to start wrapping this thing up like a bad christmas present.  I think the pieces are in place, and despite the twists and turns this thing has taken me on, I can still have the ending that I pictured when I set out on the journey, which is a pretty cool feeling.  Like leaving on a road trip that ends in Seattle and traveling through Arizona instead of Wyoming, but that means I got to see the Grand Canyon along the way, which is something I’ve always wanted to see, so there’s that.  So a pinpoint of light is stabbing through the veil, and like a cartographer’s compass, it’s guiding me home.  A tractor beam pulling me in.  A magnet drawing me toward the finish, as Andre Agassi put it.

One day left in my first year as a high school teacher.  Teaching is a journey in its own right, but considering this is where I saw myself when I started down this road, it’s quite a feeling being here.  Don’t get me wrong, my time in middle school was instructive, but kids at that age are just not a good match for me; I swear I felt myself regressing every day, and I think if I’d spent a few more years teaching at that level, my voice would have undropped and I would have entered reverse puberty, which is totally a real thing that I absolutely did not just this minute invent for the sake of a stupid joke.  Totally.  In seriousness, seeing the seniors I taught this year graduate was a sobering moment that really brings some sense of accomplishment and fulfillment to my career, and the fact that I can even call my job a career is a testament to my wife who pushed me onto this road in the first place.  So, thanks, honey.

Also, one day left in my life as a parent of one.  It’s a rather metropolitan scenario, scheduling the birth of your child, but science does what science must do, and for reasons that probably don’t concern anybody who doesn’t know my wife and I personally, we had a c-section last time and thus must have a c-section this time, and that means we get to pick the day on which Sprout the Second is born.  Assuming she makes it that far, which, as long as she makes it through tomorrow, she has.  I never thought I would be ready to be a father of one, but it turns out not to be nearly so bad as I feared, so the fact that I feel completely unprepared to be a father of two does not daunt me nearly so much.  That said, I know full well that thinking I’m in any way ready for what’s to come is an error of hubristic proportions (yeah, hubristic is a word I just made up, I consider myself a writer now, deal with it).  Sidenote: my writing is going to be completely blown up for likely the rest of the week, if not the rest of my life.  My apologies in advance.

One hundred follows.  If trends continue, I should meet and pass that before the week is out, assuming all my writing doesn’t go over the cliff (which it may well do).  This baffles and astonishes me, because while I like to pretend that I have things to say and an interesting way in which to say them, actually having proof that there are folks out there willing to read my brain droppings (thanks George Carlin) on a regular basis is still a bit of a shock to the system.  I owe a lot of those follows to Chuck Wendig’s Flash Fiction challenges, but I know that some of you out there have discovered me through my unprompted posts about the bizarre and wonderful act of writing, the bizarre and wonderful act of running, and the bizarre and wonderful act of parenting.  However you ended up with your eyeballs processing my wordy bits, thanks for taking the time out.  Knowing I have an audience, no matter how big or small, is a tremendous motivator on those days when I feel like I can’t possibly complete this thing I’ve now nearly finished doing.  However, for the record, you’ll have nobody to blame but yourselves if and when I actually publish this thing.

What else can I say?  It’s way past my bedtime and it’s a rather big day ahead, my last day as a teacher this (academic) year, and my wife will be getting a healthy dose of poking and prodding in preparation for the Lexi landing on Thursday.  That calls for a drink.

Just kidding, I already had a drink, as my punctuation and rambling in this post will attest.  Happy Tuesday.