Tag: motivation

Minor Adjustments, Major Damage

Pavowski2 Comments

There you are, elbows deep in the carcass of your precious draft, its viscera laid bare before you, your sterile gown smeared with its blood. You look over at the monitors and see the dancing line that is its pulse, hear the slow rhythm of its feeble heartbeat. It’s faint but fierce, clinging to life the way living things do.

It’s laying on your table because it needs help. You’ve sliced it open to see how its insides are arranged and to try to put them back into some semblance of order, but with that first cut all the slimy bits came pouring out like so much spaghetti from an overturned pot, and you have no idea how all this was ever contained in that tiny vessel, nor do you have any idea how you will ever put it back together again. Add to that the fact that you’ve got a few prosthetics waiting to be implanted as well, and the entire ordeal seems about as likely and possible as stuffing a camel wholesale into a shoebox.

So you poke and you prod, and you begin the tedious task of testing what happens when you tug on this muscle, when you nudge that bone, when you tickle this mass of nerves, and watch as the whole organism jumps and dances, demonstrating with shocking clarity all the connections you never saw between this character and that plotline, this complication with that resolution, this joke in the first act with that death in the third. This isn’t just hipbone-connected-to-the-legbone stuff. This is every-blood-vessel-feeds-every-organ-in-the-body. Change one character’s reaction to a simple greeting in the first few pages and the story can end in a completely different place. As intricate and well-formed as the web of story elements may be, it’s imperfect. It needs to be fixed.

You sever a vein here, trim back some muscle there to make room for the new element you have to introduce, and the patient starts hemorrhaging. You get the sense that you’ve ruined everything with one little cut, and blood is rushing to the wound and you can’t see what you’re doing and the only way out is to keep cutting, keep sponging, keep tearing, until the hole is big enough and you can cram the prosthetic in there and begin the bizarre work of reattaching the existent tissue to the alien device, and you’re thinking to yourself, this will never work. It doesn’t fit, it isn’t right, this is a disaster. I’ve killed my story.

But then something strange happens. Through the haze of inkblood and wordgore, you see a sign of healing. The native tissue is accepting the new organ, the capillaries slowly starting to feed it rather than strangle it. The tissue is mending itself, almost of its own volition, as you stitch the narrative flesh back together. As much as you want to save the story, the story wants to survive. The characters adjust the way they react and behave, the plotlines snake and coil into new, more correct pathways, and while the task at hand by no means looks easy, it suddenly looks like it just might be possible. You work and you sweat and you call an intern over to wipe your brow (okay, I have interns in this scenario) and you work some more, suturing and clamping and staunching and stitching, and in what feels like minutes, hours have passed and the patient is stable and has a brand new leg right next to the other three (hey, nobody said I was building a human-normative story here) and if you look at it from the right angle, it might actually be better than the original after all. You close the patient up and he’s stable for the time being and you scrub down and you feel like maybe you’ve done some good for your story despite all your doubts, and then you remember that this is only the first in a six-week regiment of reconstructive surgeries before this patient is cleared to stumble, blinking, into the light of day.

And that prospect is terrifying.

But you’ve survived one day of rewrites, which somehow tells you you can survive another day.

Man. Day one of the serious rewrites is in the bag, and I am exhausted. But I hope — no, I think — that the story is one day better.

 

Baby Steps Don’t Fargo Up My Feet

Pavowski2 Comments

I think there’s little as frustrating to somebody who’s been productive as the inability to produce at the level you know you’re capable of.

Okay, that’s vague as anything. Specifically, I’m talking about running. If you follow, you may know that this has been a year plagued with injury for me. First one foot, then the other; the soles, then the ankles, then the heels, until I start to wonder if I’m not so much doing damage to myself as my body has simply passed its sell-by date and is withering and falling apart like a bunch of rotted grapes.

But I’ve been to the doctor, and the doctor said to give running a try again, so run I did. And I’ve gone on two runs now, my first in a month (which honestly felt like an entire season, given all the crazies I was stirring during that month). And they’ve been okay. There’s tightness and there’s uncertainty, but no pain. Such an astounding lack of pain, in fact, that I’m having all the delusions of grandeur that accompany a return to form: “maybe it’s not so bad. I can do another mile!” or “this isn’t so bad. I can go faster!” And while I almost certainly could do those things, that would almost certainly be the most direct route back to injury.

So I am tempering the glee that comes with being able to run without crippling pain by forcing myself to take it slow, listen to my feet, and make sure that I don’t rush myself right back into the podiatrist’s office again.  But taking it slow is an agony. My body chemistry has changed over the last three years, to the point where the run satisfies something like hunger in my brain, and like an alcoholic feeling the pull of a perfectly mixed gin and tonic, I’ve got the scent of these last couple of runs in my bones. The chill bite of the fall air in my lungs, the regular tap of my feet on the pavement, the ebbing drone in my mind as my focus slips away and I embrace the calm.

My wife and I are signed up for a race in a week and a half, and I may actually be able to run at least a portion of it with her. We’ve signed up for another in January. I won’t be running my farthest distances or my fastest paces by any stretch, but I’m pretty confident that simply being out there will be enough. For now, it’s time to suck it up and accept that it’s not the time to run fast or far, and appreciate the fact that I can run at all.

Progress Update: Last Chance for Gas

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Today, a pretty big milestone in novel progress.

Thanks to a gargantuan push stemming from a renewal of gumption at the beginning of the week, I processed the last thirty pages of the draft over the past three days and am ready to start on my last phase of rewrites for this first editing pass.

To clarify, “processed” means I read it, cleaned up the stinky bits of language, corrected typos, and fixed the bric-a-brac on the shelves, all the while making notes about walls that need tearing down, wires that need ripping out, and pipes that need sealing. That’s the big, scary work, and that will begin … probably next week. Tomorrow I hope to review the first half of the novel to recreate the notes I lost with my old notes and finish creating an outline of the book as it stands. If I have time leftover, I’m going to map out the character arcs and think about re-ordering some portions of the novel.

To be fair, the processing was the easy part, and the much harder work–rewriting the crap bits, changing major plot points, going back to the beginning to plant seeds which need to be fully grown by the end–is still ahead. That’s the stage that’s truly harrowing. It stretches out on the horizon like an endless desert, and somehow I know there are no pit stops along the way; there will be no gas stations or emergency call boxes if I blow a tire or make a wrong turn. However, the big push this week has me crackling with energy and enthusiasm to keep pushing.

And the funniest thing happened as I was reading the last pages.

I realized that I really, really like the story. And I’m saying that not to toot my own horn, but because I truly think that for all the tribulations and for all I thought the book was awful when I was writing it, upon further review and after several months to get some space, ultimately it seems to me that the novel is not that bad. I’ve still got big decisions to make, the fates of characters to decide. I’ll have to destroy some of the helpless squealing unformed bits that I enjoyed so much at the beginning and create brand new replacement parts on the fly, but somehow that task doesn’t seem so daunting.

And that’s not even the best part.

When I was writing the first draft, I could feel myself running out of steam by the end. The last twenty thousand words or so felt like the last miles of a marathon; even with the finish line in sight, even riding on the balmy current of you’re-almost-there-itis, I could feel my knees giving out, my quads locking up, my lungs collapsing in on themselves. I felt like the ending I was writing was simply a placeholder, something awful I was writing to simply get the project to a stopping point so that I could rewrite it later and forget I ever wrote something so bad. But reading it the last couple of days, I find that I’m actually a pretty big fan of the ending. The characters end in good places (while good of course doesn’t necessarily mean “good” for the character, but rather “good” for the story), the critical loose ends are tied up, and there’s a nice sense of completeness to the whole thing. My wife thinks I should leave it open for a sequel in case this thing goes all Harry Potter on me, and I think that the potential to continue is there, though certainly the story could (and does) stand on its own.

There are holes to patch. Rotted boards to replace, rough edges to smooth down. But on the whole I think this thing is moving as it should past the ugly formative stages into the workable beta-reading stage. Which is itself simultaneously amazing and terrifying, because that means that I’m going to have to pry my whitened knuckles from its tender edges and let it go out into the world to be read by people who don’t know the time I’ve spent with it, who don’t know the love and the pain and the suffering and the insanity and the laughter and the frustration and the days and nights and the weekends spent living with these characters, exploring all the plotlines, envisioning the world of the story. Nobody can know all that, but they’re going to have to judge it all the same, and my only hope is that when that time comes, maybe they won’t return it to me and ask, “why did you bother?”

For all my confidence at the high points along this journey, I am still terrified that I’ll be unmasked as a pretender at this whole writing gig. I fear that my internal barometer for assessing the story is hopelessly warped and that I have no proper idea what makes a story actually readable or compelling or enjoyable in the least. But this is no time for entertaining those fears. It’s nearing time to cut the cord and throw this fledgling creation of mine out of the nest and see if it can fly.

I just hope that when that time does finally arrive, I can survive the feedback.

Staying Motivated (or, how to keep writing on those days when the writing sucks)

Pavowski9 Comments

I’ve struggled with motivation mightily in the months since I started working on my novel.

Some days I feel buoyed by powerful waves of motivation, a deep, slow-burning desire to write and create and push this thing forward.  On those days, it’s all I can do to get myself in front of the computer before the ideas and the words start clawing their way out of my skull.  The plotlines and characters and conflicts dance around in my headspace subconsciously all day, sometimes resolving themselves in time to be written down in neat orderly arrays, other times becoming tangled and spilling out onto the page like intestines from a vicious gut wound.  Motivation isn’t a question on those days.  I’m going to write, regardless of what else I may have going on.

Other days I’m Sisyphus, and my novel is a big boulder the size of six or seven giant men and the hill I have to push it up is high indeed.  Even thinking about the task makes me feel weary and exhausted, and my mind starts thinking of all the other things in my life that need doing in this moment, and wouldn’t it be easier to focus on those things and then, maybe after I’ve done those things, I’ll feel like writing and I can get some work done.  Except, as anybody who’s ever put something off knows, you arrive at the end of the day and you still don’t feel like working on the novel, and what’s more you don’t have time to work properly on it anyway, and also you feel crappy about the fact that you haven’t gotten anything done with it today.  The simple act of even reading your own work to see where you’ve just come from and where you might go next seems like a slog through an endless swamp.  These days it feels impossible to write.

But the writing doesn’t change.  The book is just a book, just a story waiting to be told.  The characters, lively as they may be, are but lumps of clay looking for hands to shape them.  It’s only my perception of the work that seems to affect my motivation to work on it.  So how do you cultivate motivation?  Here are some humble ideas.

And I realize as I edit this post that while this dubious advice seems to fit for writing, I think it applies for staying motivated at just about anything, and if that’s the case, so be it.

  • Eyes on the Prize: On those days when I just don’t feel like writing, I have to remind myself that if it was easy, everybody would do it.  Anything worth doing is worth working hard for, and the book isn’t going to write itself; the words aren’t just going to arrange themselves on the page for me.  Yes, I may be a bit stuck on the story.  Yes, I might be a bit confounded by what this character is trying to do.  But these are Writer Problems, and it’s a writer’s job to solve those problems.  If I want to be a writer — to have that success, to have that recognition, to complete a Story Worth Telling — it’s no good hiding from the work.  When it gets hard, when it gets overwhelming, when it seems impossible, I start asking myself, “do you really want it?”  And almost always, I find that I can get some work done after all.
  • Plan of Attack:  If you were to ask me if I were an organized person, I would begin by laughing hysterically.  Then I might offer you a picture of my garage, or my desk, or my bedroom, and you’d quickly realize that not only am I not by any stretch organized, I might not even know what the word means.  But organization has been key to staying motivated and keeping the boulder rolling uphill.  But I don’t mean organization in the general sense of having a place for everything and everything in its place.  (I strive for that, but I often miss the target.)  I mean rather knowing what I want to accomplish within a given time frame, having a clear idea of what’s to be done on that day, seeing the obstacles and knowing perhaps not exactly how I will deal with them but at least that I am capable.  Notes to myself are invaluable for this.  Every day of drafting I’d finish with a little note to myself: “introduce this character tomorrow.”  “wrap up this scene tomorrow.”  “go back and establish that the main character carries a Taser in her purse so that she can zap this guy now.”  I need to know what needs to happen next more than I need to know what I’ll be doing in three weeks.
  • Window of Opportunity:  One of my favorite quotes of late says something along the lines of, “never put off a dream because of the time it will take to achieve it.  The time will pass anyway.”  And to say that time is a factor when it comes to motivation is a ridiculous understatement.  You need time to do the work.  You need time to do the other stuff in your life so that you can focus on the work.  And time doesn’t give a slippery sharknado about you or your work.  Time is going to roll on past you like a bus rolling past a pile of dog vomit.  If I’m sitting around waiting to find time to get the writing done, then the writing just isn’t going to get done that day.  I have to decide, early on during the day if not the day before, when I’m going to get the writing done.  Maybe tomorrow I can carve out time on my lunch break.  The day after, my wife has a class, so I can do some writing that evening.  However I do it, I have to seize the time, carve it from the still thrashing carcass of the beast, if I want to write that day.  I have to create the window of opportunity for myself to work in.
  • Achievable Goals: It’s too big to think “I need to work on the book today.”  What the balls does that even mean?  Character outlines?  Plot diagrams?  Word count?  No, if I’m going to be focused and motivated to do the writing, I need a goal to work toward that I can actually accomplish during a working session.  Write 900 words today.  Introduce this character into the scene.  End this scene.  All these little goals are part and parcel of the big goal — work on the book — but the difference is, they are things I can get done.  How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.
  • Embrace the Suck: There are days wherein, despite the best of intentions, I’m going to write crap.  I’ll read back over a passage and wish that somebody else had written it, because surely, surely, I can’t be that bad, that uncreative, that uninspired.  And it’s all too easy to see that happening, to take stock of the growing puddle of sharknado on the page, and say NOPE, the work sucks, I suck, writing sucks.  I’m taking my ball and going home.  And I think that’s a normal reaction (correct me if I’m wrong).  But nobody works perfect the first time around, or for that matter, the second or the third.  There came a point where I realized that it was okay to write something terrible, as long as I was working toward the goal.  It’s easier to rewrite something, to clean it up and tweak it, than it is to start from scratch.  It’s easier to bust a thing apart and start over, even, because you still have all the pieces to work with when it’s time to put it back together.  If I can hold it together and write through the bad days and write when it’s awful, then it keeps the pipes clear for when the ideas want to flow on their own.

To put all this in perspective, here’s a turn that’s happened in the last few weeks.  A few weeks back, I lost the notebook I’ve been using to keep notes for my edit.  I keep notes in the draft as well, but big stuff that needs fixing in the work as a whole went into the notebook.  And it was just gone.  It’s still gone.  And with it went much of my motivation.  I’d lost a significant portion of work, lost a ton of time, and felt overwhelmed at the prospect of going back and doing much of the same work again.  And my work over the past few weeks has suffered.  I’ve been dragging my feet, doing the work at the last minute, doing the bare minimum, even skipping days.  I was dreading the writing.

Well, yesterday I accepted the fact that the notebook was gone and started a new one.  And yeah, it sucks looking at those blank pages that I have to refill.  And it’s painful writing down notes that I’ve already written and retreading ground that I’ve covered before.  But somehow, just accepting the loss and refocusing my effort has given me the best couple of days of editing that I’ve had in a month.  I’m not saying I’ve done the best work, I’m saying I feel better about the work.  Perception is everything.  I refocused from the lost notebook to getting the book done, I made a new plan around my new notebook, I got serious again about making my own time to work, and I accepted the lost work and moved on.  Suddenly, working on the book is that thing I can’t wait to do again.

Tomorrow, the pendulum may swing back the other way, but I’ll keep working anyway.  Motivation isn’t some magic elixir you can drink and suddenly be filled with purpose.  It’s just another thing to be worked at.

 

NaNoWriNOPE.

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You can’t swing a cat the last couple of days without hearing about NaNoWriMo.  Well, I guess that’s only true if you travel in writerly circles.  Outside literary circles the talk, I’m sure, is just more football, more Ebola, more elections, and if you’re really unlucky, the start of the Christmas season.  Down here with the writers and the would-be’s, though, it’s all NaNoWriMo all the time.

I think NaNoWriMo is awesome.  I’ve never done it, but I’ve had friends who tried.  Anything that motivates an otherwise stuck writer to unstick himself and put pen to paper, keys to screen, voice to dictaphone, is a thing that’s fighting on the side of good.

That said, I can’t personally get excited about it.

I don’t know why.  Maybe it’s my innate anti-herd mentality, my inherent distrust of groupthink.  If a lot of people are doing a thing because it’s trendy, most of the time, that alone is enough for me to not want to do that thing.  And NaNoWriMo is definitely trendy.  The website claims that over 300,000 people completed the challenge last year, to say nothing of the untold scores that fell off the wagon.  And I have a feeling that, faced with the mammoth task of slaying a 50,000 word novel, there were more than a few that fell off the wagon.

NaNoWriMo should appeal to me on every level.  It invites anybody who feels they have a story to tell to get off their donk and tell that story.  That’s a message I believe in; just look at what I’ve done with this place since I suddenly decided I had stories worth telling, oh, seven or eight months ago.  It encourages you to pour your heart and soul into a thing and work doggedly at it against all odds to get it done.  Yeah, I feel that.  It tells us that anybody — anybody — can do this writing thing, no matter what job you work at or don’t work at, no matter what demands your family makes on your time, no matter  what else you have going on in your day.  All this is relevant to my interests.

But I won’t be doing it this year.  And I probably won’t be doing it for many years to come.

I think my problem with it… no, that’s not right.  Problem is too strong a word, and I’m not here to take a bold stand against NaNoWriMo.  I think it’s awesome, as I stated above.  So, not a problem, as such.  More a misgiving, a lurking doubt.  My lurking doubt about NaNoWriMo is that it’s a gimmick.  And before I wander out onto this very tenuous, very no-actual-leg-to-stand-on branch, let me make it clear that this is just what I think for me.

When I thought about whether or not I would try for NaNoWriMo this year (and I did ponder it, briefly), I realized that it struck me as a gimmick. A potentially useful gimmick, perhaps.  A gimmick which would push me toward my goal of becoming a better and hopefully published writer, probably.  But a gimmick.  It’s imposing a ludicrous daily writing goal.  An insane deadline.  A Herculean writing task.  And if I were to fail at it, to come up short, I’d tear myself up over it.  That’s my MO, that’s what I do.  A missed deadline, a failure to produce, is crippling to me.  Insecurity about whether I’ll be able to produce is why I’m starting to stress out NOW, at the beginning of November, about whether I will in fact finish my first editing pass by the year’s end as I arbitrarily set out to do.

No, working on this edit and pushing out another short story every week and unspooling my brain on the blarg here are quite enough writing goals for November and the near future, for that matter.

I don’t need NaNoWriMo to feel like a writer.  Neither, for that mater, does anybody taking part.  But if it helps you, more power to you.  If it motivates you, then let it motivate you, and embrace the headache and the stress and the adrenaline and the frenzy of it.  I’ll just be over here, plugging away at my novel already in progress, occasionally tossing off posts about how amusing it is watching the NaNoWriMo’ers flailing around.

At any rate, if you’re NaNoWriMo’ing, go get it.  But just remember that you don’t need it.  If you’re a writer, you’re a writer without NaNoWriMo.