Tag: motivation

Write Anyway

Pavowski7 Comments

Some days, the writing sucks.

Like today. The kids were up way too early. The sun hasn’t come out all day, so it’s like the world never really woke up. It’s literally obscured by smoke that has blown in across the country from wildfires in Alaska. The house is a wreck and I have no drive to clean it.

In short, I feel like crap, though there’s nothing physically wrong with me.

When I got the kids down for a nap, all I wanted was to close the light-filtering curtains, crank up the white noise machine to drown out the noise of the cats crashing around in their midday shenanigans, and join them in dreamland for a blissful hour or so. I was feeling completely exhausted, bone-crushingly uninspired, will-sappingly unmotivated, and in short like a total waste of space. (I won’t call it Writer’s Block, because I firmly believe that Writer’s Block is just a fancy way of saying that I am not responsible for my creative ability. Writer’s Block can last for years. It’s a crutch. It’s a way of hiding from the work you really want to be doing. Fargo Writer’s Block.)

But I wrote anyway.

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And I felt better.

It damn sure wasn’t my best work, but upon reflection, it probably wasn’t my worst, either. And the house is still a mess, and my son is cranky because he peed the bed, and my daughter is clinging to me like a tick to the underside of a particularly furry dog because she fell asleep way too late. And there are dishes to do and toys to pick up, and the world still feels kinda sharknado-ey today.

But there are always these days. The kids are always going to find reasons to be cranky or jittery or whiny or loud or awful. The house is always going to be messy or in need of repair or stinky from last night’s dishes I didn’t wash or the trash I didn’t take out. There will always be days when the weather sucks, when my mood sucks, when the world itself seems to want you not to write. Or, you know, whatever your thing is. Life and the world will get in the way of your thing.

But today I wrote anyway, and I feel a little better.

Because I really want to be a writer. And if I’m not writing, then I’m not a writer.

Photo by Ramiro Ramirez @ Flickr.

Weekly Re-Motivator: Summary Stew

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I can’t stand the summary.

You know, you crack the book open, and on the inside fold or the back cover or wherever, you get the blurb that tells you in a nutshell what the story is all about.

Karl Wisenberg is a mild-mannered office worker hiding a secret: his radioactive toenails. But there’s something more sinister than glowing fungus afoot…

Alice Klepper sells jewelry by day and state secrets by night. But will an unexpected purchase by an eight foot tall stranger provide her with the biggest secret of all?

The summary is supposed to give you a taste for the story without spoiling it for you; it’s supposed to whet your appetite and get you to crack the book and keep on cracking it until the end.

And I hate it. Because it gives the impression that the story is all about plot, that the narrative is a simple math equation with all these different elements — character, setting, tension, conflict — that add up to something. But a story is more than the sum of its parts. Because holding it all together is a fumy glue all the stuff you can’t fit in the summary: the creeping sense of dread you get every time a character opens a door in the story, where you don’t really know whether behind the door will be a harmless delivery man or a hatchet-wielding trans-dimensional wasp-man. Or the biting irony that infuses every word, wherein you can feel the author’s arched eyebrow and hear the sardonic twist behind every turn of phrase.

You can’t get that in a summary, and that’s the most important part of the story, I think. Because really: whatever you’re writing, the story has been told before. No matter how unique, how original, how unexpected your twists and turns are, somebody, somewhere has twisted and turned down that road. The only difference, the only thing that makes your story unique, is the way you tell it, the specific blend of spices you drop into the mix, the character that you build the story into.

Because a story is a living thing. It’s not just a chain of events, one thing leading into another like a dull-witted chain-gang of tromping inevitability. The story itself, just like the characters, has a flavor; the narrative itself has a feel about it that is much more than just the things which happen in it. And that flavor is what makes the story unique, that flavor is the thing that sticks with you after you’ve finished the book and brings you back, like the unbelievable egg rolls at your favorite restaurant.

Which is what I’m struggling with in my current project. I’ve got a decent chain of events, I’ve got decent characters and reasonable tension and a good smattering of conflict. But I haven’t found the right flavor for the brew. And the story, and my motivation for working on the story, is suffering as a result. I haven’t found the right feel for the story, and the story feels wrong as a result. Feels bland, uninteresting. Luckily, writing isn’t like cooking. You want a good solid stew, you have to get all the spices in at just the right moment to release their flavor and bring out the best in the dish. In writing, though, you get as many chances as you need. Screw up the flavor and you can add more salt at the last minute, or strain out the bad spices and replace them with new ones, or even toss the whole dish and rebuild it from the ground up.

But the flavor will come. The thing with writing is to keep plugging away at it, keep working, keep creating. The more these characters simmer in the narrative stew I’ve created for them, the more the subtle notes will come out, the more I’ll be able to tell what flavor is right for this tale.

So, as you’re writing, don’t stress about the summary. Focus on the flavors, focus on the interplay between elements, focus on the parts between the “important” story elements, because those are what keep readers coming back for more.

Am I wrong? Is the summary more important than I give it credit for? What flavor do you most appreciate in a story?

This weekly Re-Motivational post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Every Saturday, I use LindaGHill‘s prompt to refocus my efforts and evaluate my process, sometimes with productive results.

The Toddler Wobbles (or, the Tripwire of Self-Doubt)

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My daughter is this close to walking.

She’s been doing the “cruising” thing for about a month now, where she’ll grab the edge of a table, or the couch, or the leg of my shorts, and just sort of shimmy along, one shaky step after another; but of course, she can only go where whatever she’s clamped onto can take her. And she’s been walking assisted for several weeks beyond that, holding gleefully to the hands of whoever has the patience and the dorsal fortitude to bend over and escort her around the house. Again, of course, she can go only where her guide takes her.

There is an unmitigated joy about her as she does any of these things. Her little stumpy legs clomp along not unlike those of the imperial walkers in Star Wars, stable enough only if everything goes according to plan. She laughs, shrieks, smiles. Then tumbles.

But she won’t walk on her own.

And I know, I know. She’ll get it in time. But there’s something frustrating and heartbreaking in seeing her shuffling along, a wobbly snowman on stilts, and knowing that she could walk if she would only decide that she had the capability.

She’s done it before.

She’ll cruise along the table for a minute, then pick up a toy and turn and totter over to the sofa — a yawning gulf of two steps or so, but a moonshot in the scope of toddlers. I’ll stand her up in the floor across from her mother, and she’ll hold my hands until she’s within a step of her mother, then detach in time to fall forward into her mom’s loving embrace. She has the strength. She has the balance. What she doesn’t have is the knowledge that she’s perfectly capable.

Now, she can crawl with the best of them. In fact, she can muster so much speed on her hands and knees that it’s a little startling: she can cross a room in just a couple of seconds, and be sitting there angelic as ever when you come back in from getting a glass of water. This, paired with her propensity (and joy) for grabbing things and sticking them in her mouth is enough, almost, to keep you from leaving the room at all when she’s around (what if she pulls the TV over on herself, or what if she swallows the dog, or what if she goes into the garage, fires up the pneumatic hammer, and takes out the retaining wall?). An inability to walk isn’t, in other words, keeping her from getting around.

But when she starts walking, she’ll be so much better off — she’ll be faster, she’ll be able to take things with her, she’ll be able to reach her hands up and hug your knee when she walks by. She needs to walk. She just won’t.

I can’t say it’s fear, because she isn’t afraid of falling. She’ll gladly pitch herself sideways while my wife or I holds her, despite the five-foot drop to the ground that surely awaits if she manages to escape. It’s as if she simply doesn’t grasp the idea that walking instead of crawling might be a better way to do it. Like cave dwellers who won’t take the ipod that’s being proffered to them, believing instead that eating worms and running from daylight is better than the natural next phase in human evolution (selfies and social media, of course). She just doesn’t realize that she’s hamstringing herself by keeping to all fours, doesn’t understand that her muscles and her sense of balance are ready for her to walk, doesn’t get how much her world is going to open up for her when she begins to walk.

She’ll get it eventually. One day — maybe tomorrow, maybe next week — she’ll shuffle off on her own and then my wife and I will really be in trouble — but until then, she’s stuck crawling, cruising, and being escorted everywhere she goes. Which works, but when you consider the alternative, is a bit lousy.

But then it got me thinking. (As such things often do.)

If my baby has the capacity to walk, but lacks the knowledge of that capacity, what am I capable of that I just haven’t grasped yet? If she’s only holding off on taking her first steps because she doesn’t realize that she can, what am I keeping myself from just because I lack the belief in myself?

How much more could we be, if we could only believe we were capable?

Are you crawling, when you should be walking?

Not a Creative Bone in Your Body…

Pavowski4 Comments

Creativity is innate.

Some of us, some lucky few, are chosen by whatever gods may be to be the storytellers, the artists, the performers… and those few are born with the talent and creativity that will last the rest of their lives. And they won’t have to work at it nearly as hard as the rest of us, and they’ll infuriate the rest of us while we silently bash our heads against the glass ceiling we’ll never crash through. We are born with creativity as much as we’re born with the bones in our bodies.

Right?

Well… that may be a little bit true. Just like some of us are born taller or cleverer or more musically inclined, there is probably something to the supposition that creativity is innate, that it’s luck of the draw, and that some people have an easier road to walk in creative endeavors. But you can’t change your bones, you can’t change the fact that you’re colorblind, you can’t change a sweet tooth. You can, however, change your creativity.

Creativity is a muscle, not a bone. It strengthens and tightens with use, atrophies and withers when neglected. Lots of creative types don’t bother creating because they aren’t properly motivated to do so. And, of course, lots of people who aren’t naturally creative become very creative indeed by virtue of the fact that they went out and created anyway, cultivating creative muscle through sheer force of will and sheer tenacity of repetition.

Here’s the thing: just like virtually anything in life, creativity is there for the taking if you’re willing to work at it. Creative genetics are great if you’ve got them, but if you don’t, you’re not blacklisted from the club. We have a saying in coaching: hard work beats talent when talent won’t work hard. So many people sit back and say I wish I could write stories, or I’d love to write a screenplay, or I’m going to write a song one day, but then they just sit back and wait for that day to roll around. Naturally creative types do the same thing, of course; they take for granted their ability to put stories together or craft brilliant sentences or whatever, and they don’t practice their craft — or worse, they just don’t follow through and never finish anything. So, if you can finish what you start, and you have a desire to be creative, you just have to jump in and do it.

You may be crap when you start out. But who picks up a guitar and immediately starts cranking out “Freebird”? Who picks up a paintbrush and tosses off a Van Gogh at one pass? Remember, if you’re trying, and if you’re being consistent and finishing what you start, you are ahead of the vast majority of people out there, because most people will never bother undertaking a creative endeavor in their life. They’ll sit back and consume and read and watch and dream, but they won’t work for it. They could have all the creative bones in the world making up their skeleton, but they won’t take the time to cultivate the muscle needed to make the machine work.

So the next time somebody tells you that you’re not creative enough — even if that somebody is you — remember that you don’t have to be born creative. You can become creative.

If it matters to you.

This post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday.

Comparison Shopping (or, Dirty Writer Secrets)

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Writing is like running, I think. If you’re doing it, you’re winning.

Sounds cliche, but I believe it. For a couple of reasons.

First of all, there is no way to actually “win.” In running, the fastest person in the hundred-yard-dash won’t be able to hold a candle to a marathoner’s pace. And a marathoner won’t be able to touch the explosive energy of the sprinter. He who wins a marathon this year will get edged out next year. There is no “best.” So it is with writing. There are bestsellers, sure, but they rotate as quickly as the windmill blades on that damn mini-golf hole that you can never score less than seven strokes on. And there are popular writers within genres, but the question of who is “best” is always a matter of personal preference. So, in both endeavors, you win by simply doing the thing to the best of your ability.

Then, of course, there’s the fact that by and large, running is an individual activity. Okay, on race day you might meet up with 1000 of your closest friends to pound the pavement in your town, and maybe you run with a group on the weekend, but most of the time it’s just you and your shoes (if shoes are your thing). So, too, with writing. At some point you bring in readers, and if you’re at a certain point you might have editors or agents or reviewers, but most of the time it’s just you and the computer. Or typewriter. Or notebook. Or yellow snow.

And there’s really no point in comparing yourself to anybody else, right? I could compare myself with Meb Keflezighi (yep, I definitely had to google to see how to spell that), but what would be the point? He’s been running his whole life, and I will never perform at that level, so why beat myself up about the fact that I won’t be winning any marathons? Likewise, it’d be pointless to measure myself by such yardsticks as Stephen King, or Douglas Adams, or Jasper Fforde, or Neil Gaiman (and I’m just now recognizing that I need more female authors in my go-tos); I might as well be an ant shouting obscenities at the boot descending toward my segmented thorax.

So you run for you, and you write for you, and if you’re doing those things, and doing them well enough to feel good about what you’re doing, that should be good enough, right?

Well, that’s true. But there’s something else in us, I think, that makes it impossible for us not to compare ourselves to others. We may not mean to, we may actively try not to, but, come on — can you look at the person with a bestseller credit and not feel a little pang of, “man, maybe one day?” Can you watch Meb crossing the finish line and not think, “if only I could do that?”

I think the focus, in writing and in running, should be inwardly-focused. Your concern should be yourself and your improvement, and if you can say that what you did today was better than what you did yesterday, then you’re doing all right.

But. (There is always a but.)

I have a dirty secret. I like to compare myself to those lower on the ladder.

Right? Makes me feel good to see the people struggling with things I no longer have to struggle with.

Okay, so, when I drive around and see people out slogging it in the heat, running at a pace barely above a shuffle, I gloat a little inside. Poor sap, I think. Look how hard you’re working, for so little return. I think about how much faster I am, or how much farther I can go, and I feel better about me. I get a thrill if I pass another runner when I’m out on my own run, no matter what the situation, because in that moment, I’m better.

And I’m no different in writing. In fact, I’m worse in writing. I know a blogger/writer much in the same vein as myself, an aspiring novelist working to get his/her feet on the ground (or off it, choose your metaphor). I read his/her work semi-regularly. And he/she is just awful. Every story turns to over-the-top melodrama. Every character is an unjustified badass. Every turn is so heavy-handed and abrupt that I feel thrown into a narrative ditch while reading. The grammar errors could bleed an old typewriter dry. The spelling makes me want to punch kittens. (No, I won’t name the writer. Or link the blog. I am relatively sure he/she is not a regular reader of mine.) I read his/her work and I think, man, I’m so much better than that! And it makes me feel good about my little pile of turdlets I’ve amassed in my swampy corner of the internet.

I know I shouldn’t. I feel bad as soon as I catch myself doing it. But just like reaching for one more Nacho Cheese Dorito, I just can’t help myself. Because I want to feel like I’m making progress. I want to feel like I’m, if not the best, at least better than somebody.

And I think it’s worth remembering that, while it’s true that there will always be somebody out there who’s better than you, there will also always be somebody out there who’s worse than you. That goes for writing, running, filing your tax returns, animal husbandry, and crocheting. I am probably, for example, worse than you at crocheting.

So use me. Because I’m using you. If I think you’re better than me, I’m using you as motivation; I want to get what you’re getting. If I think I’m better than you, I’m using you as motivation; I want to make sure you don’t catch up to me, or worse, pass me. Because even though I may think I’m better than you, and you may think you’re better than me, we are all better than the folks who always say, “man, I would really like to take up running,” or “I want to write a novel someday,” but still haven’t gotten off their donks to actually try it.

I can’t be the only one that thinks like this. Come on. Admit it.