Tag: motivation

It’s Over

Pavowski1 Comment

Remember in the Looney Tunes how Wile E. Coyote would go chasing the Roadrunner all over creation? Of course you do. Who doesn’t? (If you don’t, please feel free to exit the ride.) And then the Roadrunner would take a turn really quickly or leap a great chasm and the Coyote would miss it and just keep running straight off the end of the cliff, but as long as he didn’t look down — as long as he wasn’t aware of his mortal peril — he was okay. I think I can identify with the poor guy.

The first draft is done. It’s over. Finished. Put a fork in it. Aaand I pretty much hate it. Like, I’m fairly certain it’s among the worst things ever written, and I’ve read Twilight.  For all the reviewing I do at the start of every writing session, for all the time I spend thinking about the damn thing, I feel as if I’ve had a bit of Luke Skywalker tunnel-vision (stay on target) on it for the last month or so, and I’ve been so focused on catching the Roadrunner I hadn’t noticed that I’d gone over the edge of the cliff.  But now the chase is over — Roadrunner escaped, naturally, otherwise I’d be looking at a perfect draft — and it feels like there’s nothing left for me to do but look down so that I can get on with the business of falling to my death.

Is this how it’s supposed to feel??

Four months have gone into this project.  Four months of writing over 900 words a day, five days a week, and I NEVER MISSED A DAY outside of the week I took off when my daughter was born.  The commitment, back when I first made it, was a ludicrous one; the fact that I followed through leads me to believe that I’m actually living in a parallel universe right now, like somehow I skewed off from a reality wherein I should have crashed and burned and wound up in this altered state where I diverged and finished the mission.  It shouldn’t have happened so cleanly, so efficiently, so very on schedule.  That’s not how I operate.  IT’S ALL WRONG.  And yet I have it.  Backed up in three different locations, saved in three different formats, it’s now for all intents and purposes done.  I expected to hear choirs of mothertrucking angels on LSD, I expected an euphoric lightheadedness, I expected to literally step onto a beam of sunshine and sail off into the ether when I finished this thing.  Instead, I feel like I’m about to step in front of a firing squad.

Don’t get me wrong.  The sense of accomplishment is there.  It’s impossible, I think, to write ninety thousand words and not feel a sense of “well, I definitely did that” about it.  And I do feel good about the story I’ve written… in general.  I’m pleased with the way the conflicts unfolded, with the way (most of) the characters developed, with (a fair chunk of) the prose.  But there are holes.  Good god almighty, are there holes.  Let me count the ways.

I’m pretty sure any semblance of a voice that I had in writing the thing dissolved after the first act.  I wrote the beginning of the thing with great swagger and confidence, having a grand old time and chuckling to myself at how clever my bits of prose were.  Everything after that was crawling over broken glass through a minefield.  No room for eloquence. No time for embellishment.  Just raw, ugly, get-the-work-done-and-stay-the-fargo-down boring writing.  I feel like after the first twenty thousand words or so, the thing reads like an instruction manual.  In German.  If you’ve been reading for a while, you might remember that I used to post my favorite passage that I’d written in the day.  I’ve not posted a favorite passage in over a month.  THAT AIN’T COINCIDENCE, COWBOY.

The ending sucks.  It’s really terrible.  I mean, I guess I like what happens but the way I told it, the way I framed it, the way I presented it feels all wrong.  It’s like a Picasso painting, all funny angles and misshapen bits and awkward forced perspective, except I didn’t do it on purpose to make you think, it just came out that way because I’m awful and OH GOD WHY DID I THINK I COULD DO THIS.

Loose ends.  The thing has so many unresolved bits, so many loose ends and characters and plotlines left flapping in the wind that it’s like trying to count the untied shoelaces in a kindergarten class.  And don’t get me started on Velcro, god knows if I could’ve used Velcro on my story it wouldn’t have turned into the Gordian Knot of snarled action that i is.  The thought of tying up those loose ends makes my fingers hurt.

Just thinking about it is enough to make me want to curl up with a bottle of whiskey and drink until the whole thing goes away.  Maybe the best thing that could happen is that I black out and destroy my backups and we forget this whole thing ever happened.  That could work, right?  I honestly hate the draft so much right now.  I hate it for being so bad.  I hate the time I spent on it for being wasted in producing such a monolithic pile of dogsharknado.  And mostly I hate myself for actually thinking this was a thing I might be good at, because I can look at virtually any part of the draft and realize that IT CLEARLY ISN’T.

And yet.

The fact that I hate it gives me pause, because it means I can tell the good from the bad, and that’s worth something, isn’t it?  And the fact that I care that it’s awful is encouraging, because it speaks to a dissatisfaction that is calling out for improvement, and that’s worth something, isn’t it?  I mean, if it were awful and I didn’t hate it, then I might as well just pack it in right now, yeah?  But I don’t feel that.  I hate it and it’s awful but I don’t feel done; in fact I can’t wait to get started on the task of fixing it up so that it doesn’t suck quite so bad.  And that’s worth something, isn’t it?

Mixed feelings, no doubt.  But the draft is done, and that can’t be taken away from me, and that’s a pretty major fargoing accomplishment.  So as much as I hate it, I’m going to cling to that for now and be happy with it.  At least, I’ll try to be happy with it.

Good talk.  More to say about the first draft later, but for now, it’s time to give it some room to breathe so that I don’t feel the urge to accidentally delete / destroy / burn it.

Happy Trail (No, not that kind of happy trail)

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New running resolution: find a way to run on a trail at least once a month.  This is going to be a difficult one for me to keep, for a couple of reasons.

First, and most importantly, is the time it takes.  The nearest trail to me is about a fifteen minute drive.  Now that’s not much, but when you consider that my time is as precious as dolla dolla bills between kids and writing time and occasionally spending some time with the wife, fifteen minutes out and back in addition to the time it takes to actually complete the run makes it a not-insignificant factor.

Second, on a more practical note, is that it’s very very difficult to get a run in by myself lately.  The vast majority of my runs over the summer (and by vast majority I really do mean all but maybe two or three runs in the last six weeks) have been completed from behind the stroller, pushing his highness the sprout around like a sheik on a fancy rickshaw.  (Is that how you spell sheik?  Spellcheck is telling me it’s wrong either way.  Technology!)  Trails are not stroller-friendly, at least not the type of trails I’m talking about.

Third, and most sillily (yep), I have to drive to the trail.  This sort of goes against my zen minimalist philosophy of running, which is that you just step out the front door and go.  Add in a drive to a running location and I might as well be shelling out $20 a month to pound a treadmill into oblivion.  Okay, that’s not a perfect comparison with driving to a trail, but this is really the way my mind works.

So it will be tough to get out there even once a month.  But, ah, trails!  They delight.  Especially for a road warrior like me, there are some things you get from running on a trail that street miles just can’t even touch.

  1. I’m off the roads.  This could be its own list, but being able to complete a run without having to worry about drivers not seeing me and turning me into road pizza gives me more peace of mind than it probably should.  I had no idea how much space that tiny fear was taking up in my mind on every run.  It just evaporates on a trail.
  2. Nature smells nice.  Even just a few miles outside of town, the air changes a bit and it feels easier to breathe.  This is probably because, on the trails in my area at least, I’m surrounded by a literal oxygen factory.
  3. Shade.  Holy god, it’s hot out.  Have you noticed?  90% of the trail I covered today was engulfed in fantastical, splendiferous, glorious shade.  On my typical routes I’m lucky if I see shade for thirty seconds at a time; today, it was the sunlight on me that was the rarity.  Again, this point alone is worth virtually the price of admission in its own right.
  4. The quiet.  There’s so much ambient noise when I run around the suburbs — even in my own neighborhood — that just isn’t there out in the woods.  I don’t feel compelled to plug in headphones to block out the dull roar; rather, I feel like leaving them out entirely.  Wearing headphones in the woods almost seems a sacrilege, like I’m bringing something profane onto hallowed ground.
  5. The workout.  Even the gnarliest of roads won’t give you a hill to climb like the ones I saw today.  My calves and quads are burning just thinking about it.  The ascents and descents are sharp, sudden, and sometimes without warning, and there are rocks and roots to hop over or sidestep, which brings me to the next point:
  6. You can’t tune it out.  I think there’s value in being able to meditate, to detach and unplug and just go on autopilot during a run, and roads are great for that.  Surfaces are (generally) uniform, so you don’t have to watch your feet so much as the oncoming traffic. Generally you can leave your brain at home.  Trails are not nearly so detached.  The rocks and roots and sudden drops and uneven surfaces can send you sprawling in a heartbeat, or twist your ankle if you’re really unlucky.  Each step has to be carefully chosen and plotted, which means you’re always scanning the ground in front of you, plotting the best course.  It sounds like it should be taxing, but it’s actually rather Zen, I think.  You have to be in the moment and incredibly focused, but there’s calm in that.
  7. Spiderwebs.  Aargh running through spiderwebs is the worst and I am pretty sure I still have spiders down my back twelve hours later SERIOUSLY WHAT IS UP WITH ALL THE SPIDERWEBS

Road runs, even runs where I really run like the zombies are chasing me, do not leave me feeling wrecked like I feel today after four miles on the trails at Clinton Nature Preserve.  It was exhausting and invigorating and it reminds me that I really do have to make an effort to leave the roads behind now and then.

Now to run an ice bath for my aching, pummeled feet…

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?

The Night Writes

Pavowski6 Comments

Sometimes I start with a title, other times I write the entire post first and choose my title based on what I wrote.  Tonight I start with the title.  Immediately upon writing it, I realize that the title is misleading, because it implies that the Night is the subject and that Writes is the thing that it’s doing.  Which is nonsense.  I do the writing around here.  No, in my head it was the Night (adjective) Writes (noun), like the DTs or the heebie-jeebies.  In other words, the title is a problem.  I could change it BUT I WON’T because problems are what make the world turn.  Just ask that guy who sang about the problems and the b-words.  I feel like things worked out for him pretty well.Read More »