I’ve spoken about many of my difficulties in my writing career pretty extensively, and I don’t want anyone to think for a second I don’t love writing.
I love writing. My problem in this context is that I love it so much doing anything else always feels a little disappointing, and as it stands I still need to do other things to enable me to write. I hope that won’t be the case for very much longer, but as it stands, thems the breaks.
And it’s particularly tricky when it comes to motivation. A big part of why I write is the sheer love of it, sure, but at the same time I’m writing because I want to make a living from it. I want to be able to eat, not fancy but consistently. I want to be able to afford a home that has both power and clean water (crazy, I know), and other than that… not a whole lot, honestly. I have very modest needs, and it’s a struggle to meet those at this stage.
So moments like this, as I approach the close of another novel and will soon have to pay somebody a lot of money to edit it so I can publish it… it’s hard. The sooner I finish it, the sooner I can move on to my next project, my next novel or movie or short story or whatever, but the sooner it will also become apparent that I still can’t afford my modest standards of living off my writing alone.
It’s tough. But I don’t know what else to do, so I keep plugging away at it, hoping that maybe this novel will be the one that means I can devote more of my time to this joyous work.
Ah well. Maybe this one. And if not, maybe the next one.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Gambling
I have a problematic history with gambling. Which is to say that I enjoy it far too much, and I lack the self-control to stop most of the time.
Thankfully, I self-medicate by just never going anywhere near most gambling establishments. I love going to casinos, but as a result, I just never do to avoid the unfortunate state of losing all my money. It’s a weird combination… I know on an intellectual level that the house always wins. That’s why casinos exist… if they were in the business of losing money, they wouldn’t be in business. And I tend to be pretty good with both probabilities and avoiding standard fallacies (“Somebody has to win!”).
But at the same time I can’t really help myself. I always lose, but I always play if given the chance.
In some ways, my career is a gamble of its own. I know the likelihood of becoming a full-time writer who can support himself on his writing is slim, even if I work my butt off (which I do!). And yet, here I am, betting that this will be the book that will let me spend more time and energy writing, and less doing all the other things I have to do to support my writing.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Father's Day
There are a bunch of arbitrary holidays, and Parental days I consider foremost among those.
That’s not to say I don’t appreciate my parents. I think I do. I hope they know that, because I certainly tell them often enough.
But the idea that I “have” to honour them a specific day, or in a specific way… never really jived with me. I’m weird, I know. It’s a little like Valentine’s Day or Family Day or whatever. I hope I never need the reminder of when I am supposed to appreciate people who matter to me.
It might happen someday, I honestly hope not, but who knows.
Anyway, I called my dad, and we chatted for a little while. It’s only been a week or so since I visited him (he lives about an drive hour away, and I am currently sans-car, so I can’t visit as often as I’d like), but it’s still nice to catch up.
Happy Father’s Day to any of you out there who celebrate! As for me, I think I’m going to spend what’s left of the day writing!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Headaches
When I was younger, I don’t recall ever having headaches. I can’t specifically tell you why… it’s not like I’ve dramatically changed my diet or exercise habits or anything like that. I have lost a lot of weight since I was young, so that might be a contributing factor, but again, it might not be. I honestly don’t know!
What I do know is these days I will have headaches for a week or two every few months. If I had to guess I’d say it probably is linked to the weather? But that’s a guess. Either way, it’s bloody unpleasant when it hits. Like the last few days.
Still, I can’t really complain. I can spend today drinking coffee (caffeine tends to help), writing my novel, and generally staying out of bright lights or moving quickly. There are far worse things to suffer from, and they’re really rather mild compared to the migraines some of my friends and family suffer from.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
The Temptation of Change
Having surpassed the halfway point of my novel a few days ago, the draw to work on other projects has ramped up dramatically.
This usually happens to me around this time (or when I’m closing in on the finale). My brain is already drawn to what I’ll be doing next, and more of my cycles of my creative thinking is going into planning and dreaming the various plots or scripts for those.
It’s tricky. On the one hand, part of the job that keeps me moving forward is this constant drive for “the next” project. The next novel, the next short story, the next animation. I love that I’m always trying to figure out what I’m going to be doing next because there are just so many things I want to do.
The trade-off, of course, is that I can’t start the next project until I’m done this project, and so I need to keep at least some (ideally most!) of my focus on what I’m working on right now. A delicate balance between wanting to think about what comes next and needing to think about what I’m doing right now.
Either way, I’m looking forward to getting this novel finished up! My current temptation is to do a “short” animation for a music-video-kinda-thing just as a way to keep learning about the art, but we will see how I feel in a couple weeks when the novel is done!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Nothing New
It has been said before that there’s nothing new under the sun. From a physics perspective that’s certainly true (all matter was created at the same time, more-or-less, and while the specific form it’s currently taking may be new, the matter itself is old!).
But it’s a bit of a challenge as a writer to consider that any story I want to tell is really just a re-telling of another story. A few bells, a whistle or two, but at its core, some fundamental story archetype being re-explored through my world and my narrative, rather than something truly unique.
To be honest, I’m okay with that. I’m not out to reinvent the wheel or to be the most creative writer of all time or anything like that. I just want to make stories that people enjoy. And just because everything has been told before doesn’t mean I can’t tell it in interesting and new ways.
The story I’m working on right now owes a lot of its roots to Star Trek. It’s a story about exploration at its core. But the way I approach that exploration, and the reasons for it, and the ship it takes place on, all of that is different… and hey, Star Trek is just a re-telling of older Western stories about exploration and strange new worlds, so it wasn’t super unique either!
Basically, just because something isn’t “new” doesn’t mean it can’t be good. And here’s hoping my novel is good!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Old Sci-fi
Part of the job of being a good writer is being a voracious reader. It’s actually one of my favourite parts of the job! I can devour a good book in a day, and occasionally will finish multiple a week.
An expensive part of the job, certainly, but important.
But some of the sci-fi I read isn’t exactly contemporary. I’ve read a lot of foundational stuff, including Asimov (see what I did there?), and it can be difficult to wade through some of the old fiction. Values and judgments back then were very different, and sometimes jarringly so.
The series I’m reading right now isn’t that old, and it’s not that difficult or problematic. But there are a lot of elements that were in vogue at the time that have since fallen by the wayside (and mostly aren’t missed). “Male Gaze” is a constant problem… the inclination to view every woman in a story by their sexuality and attractiveness, and to have the heroic men all be muscular violent types. I’m oversimplifying, but you get the idea.
It’s not the worst sin that old sci-fi is guilty of, but it is jarring when read with modern sensibilities. But this is part of the job… learning what older writers did wrong, so that I don’t make the same mistakes… I make new mistakes instead.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Over Halfway and Progressing!
I have comfortably passed the halfway point in this novel, and that feels pretty good. It won’t feel as good as actually finishing the first draft (still aiming for mid-month), but you gotta take the little wins when you can.
It’s nice when a story flows like this. I’ve had a few minor bumps along the way, but nothing I didn’t manage to work out in a day or two. And while my notes are getting more and more extensive as we go along, I’m still enjoying the thrill of discovery with these characters… every time I sit down I feel like I’m getting a better idea about who each of them are. I just wish I had more time to work on it… I could have the first draft finished before the end of this week!
Ah well. If wishes were fishes and all that. I’m just happy that things are moving along, and I hope that everybody who reads the story has as much fun with it as I’m having writing it!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Fear of Falling
I’m not a big fan of heights. I suppose it’s safe to say that I really hate heights, and that I’m scared of them.
Somebody once told me that it’s not the fall that’s the problem, but the sudden stop at the end. As somebody who has never actually fallen from a significant height (that I can think of), I’m not sure that’s true. I have spent far more time terrified of high places than I have spent hitting things from having fallen.
To some extent, I seek out opportunities to be high up. I think exposure to fear is important, the ability to not let is dictate what we can and can’t do. I mean, I will probably never go to Australia because of my fear of spiders (I freeze up if the spider is the size of my pinky-nail), but I will go up ladders, or walk near cliffs, drive over really tall bridges… it’s uncomfortable, but usually I can handle it.
I mention this because yesterday I was supposed to be doing a high ropes course, but it was cancelled due to weather (high winds). A part of me laments not getting to do it, but another part of me is definitely relieved. Overcoming your fears is important, but sometimes it’s nice to not have to worry about them.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
A Very Good Month
Honestly, May has been surprisingly good for a number of reasons. My sales of books have increased (not dramatically, but definitely increased!), the novel I’m plugging away at is almost half finished (I’m hoping to hit that halfway mark either tonight or tomorrow night), and I’ve done a few things outside of the house that I wasn’t completely terrified by.
So, you know, small steps, but good steps! It’s nice to be able to look at things and see some positives in there.
Today I have a full day of writing ahead of me, aside from a quick trip to the bike shop to get a new helmet (the one I have is too small, tragically… I bought it at the beginning of the season, hoping that it would fit better than it does). And I love days like this. I have ideas I want to put on the page, and the only thing stopping me is updating all of you on that fact! So I’m going to get at it!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Birthdays!
Not mine, granted, but that’s okay because I very much dislike my own birthday. It’s a long story, not worth going into, but the net result is that while I hate my own birthday, I very much enjoy other people’s! And today is a birthday of somebody very special to me, so we’re going to go out and celebrate.
With llamas.
Technically, with alpacas. Which aren’t llamas, but look a little like them. Either way, there’s a farm nearby that does a catered lunch in the same area that the alpacas are, and it sounds really wonderful so the two of us are going to do that today. And then after that, I will probably try to write another chapter in the novel… I hit 30K words yesterday, and I have an idea of how I want the next two chapters to proceed.
So all in all, it should be a very good day!
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
A Third Done!
Approximately 1/3 of the way finished the novel! Woo! I feel pretty good about where the story is right now, although I do have some little concerns about the pace. It starts big, but for the last few chapters its been much more slow-burn rather than super exciting. Thankfully, on a bike ride yesterday, I thought of a way to help with that, and today I’m going to be writing that part into chapters 11 and 12.
Other than that, not a lot to report. I can’t believe we’re almost to June already… the year feels like it’s slipping away faster than ever before. I guess that’s sort of a side-effect of getting older. When I was young the days seemed to last forever. These days it feels like by the time I’m out of bed it’s almost time to go to bed.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Opportunity Cost
I am not a successful person. There are certainly things I have accomplished (I’ve written a bunch of books!), but by and large, I think I have been remarkably unsuccessful at life. At this point in my existence on this speck of dust suspended on a sunbeam, I thought I would be more settled, more content, more… accomplished.
I don’t need a fortune, and I have certainly never needed fame. I don’t need a lot of people to recognize who I am… I’d like to aspire to Scalzi-levels of recognition (people who know the specific genre that I write in might know who I am, but even then many do not), but I don’t need even a significant fraction of that to be happy. I’m not aiming for the stars nor the moon. Just a bit higher than I am today.
Sadly, it hasn’t happened yet, and I am starting to worry if it ever will. Stuff is hard and is only going to get harder as time goes on. Ah well. Nothing I can do about that except keep trying. Maybe someday things will get easier?
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Long Weekend!
Ah, a few glorious days off… which, for me, has no impact whatsoever. Writers don’t, as a general rule, get “days off.” There are days I write, and then there are days I should write.
Oversimplification, of course, but I can’t think of a day in the last six years that I didn’t wish I was writing in addition to or instead of whatever I was doing. I spent 10 wonderful days in Japan, and I wrote all ten of them! It was great! I wish I could do that more!
But still, days like today give me a chance to do some chores around the house, finish off a few lingering tasks, do some tidying up and throwing out of stuff. I’m a big fan of that, in general.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
A Third of the Way!
Last night I hit the 33% point in my first draft. It’s a good feeling! Even better, I was thinking about the story all day, and that’s always a good sign. The pieces of how things will be told are falling into place in a very satisfying way.
The scene that I’m writing right now is a formal dinner between several starship captains. Every time I write a scene like this I’m always reminded of Herbert’s Dune, specifically the scene where Paul is at a dinner his father is hosting and he looks around at all the diners. It’s a fascinating bit of writing in many ways, and while I never try to emulate it, I am always comparing myself to it.
To contrast that, I suppose, would be the way Martin handles feasts in A Game of Thrones. Martin is obviously more interested in the sweeping politics and machinations, but he takes a considerable amount of time to describe each dish, each location. And while I’m not the biggest fan of Martin, I will admit that the Red Wedding is one of those scenes that was written so perfectly that I will never forget it. For better or for worse, Martin knows how to write a dinner!
I don’t think the meal I’m writing about right now will hit either of those lofty comparisons, but that’s okay! I’m enjoying writing the tension, the suspicion, and the confusion of the protagonist at exactly what is (or might be!) going on. It’s a very satisfying feeling… plus I get to think about Space Food, and that’s always fun!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
The Curse of Fine Weather
So site traffic is down again. Every Spring this seems to happen… and I can’t say I blame people! The weather outside is lovely, the weather inside hasn’t improved, so why not go out and enjoy the sun while it lasts?
Except me. I hate the outdoors as a general rule. Saw too much of it when I was young and now I’d rather stay inside 99% of the time. Outside has wasps, which I’m allergic to, and mosquitos, which I hate, and it gets really cold, which sucks. Inside is where my games are and my computer is! Much better inside.
But I totally get that other people want to go outside and enjoy the sun! So you do you. I’m gonna go write about people who are happy staying inside a small metal can hurtling through space for months on end.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Delicious, Delicious Progress
There are a lot of things I love about being a writer. I love the feeling of creating a world, of telling a story that has never existed (in the way I write it, at least) before, of getting to know the characters and places as the story unfolds. Each page I learn more, and I always want to share that.
By the same token, the best feeling is when everything is flowing. Words leap from my brain unto the page (which, granted, need to be heavily edited and trimmed later), and scenes and conversations play out easily and quickly. It’s not always this way, of course… there are days where each word is like pushing your arm through a meat-grinder. But when it flows, gosh it’s a feeling like no other.
These last few days have been those kind of days. I sit down, blink, and somehow three or four thousand words have been added to my first draft. It’s wonderful!
The real trick is to ride this wave as long as I can, and then afterwards to be able to acknowledge that just because it flowed easily doesn’t make it good. Lots of editing later!
But for now lots of writing is really, really delicious!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
The Silliness of Space Opera
I write in a fundamentally absurd genre. Both sci-fi and fantasy have this problem… they hinge on the impossible. In the space opera I’m writing now, faster-than-light travel “works” following very specific rules, but there are all sorts of silly things that I have to lampshade or hand-wave away to get to that point. Relativity, gravity, acceleration, mass-thrust ratios… I know about all these things, and I could sit down and crunch the numbers (and sometimes I do), but it doesn’t make the story better if I do. In fact, it often detracts from the story… Star Wars isn’t a great space opera because we know how lightsabers work. In fact, in most of the main-canon material it’s barely mentioned, aside from the fact that they aren’t trivial sorts of things to own or make.
Star Trek puts a bit more effort into the explaining of technobabble, but not a lot. It’s still, for the most part, “ships go zoom because of magic”. And that’s fine! By establishing the tech/magic early, and the bounds of it, we (the author and the audience) can focus on the stuff that actually makes the stories cool: the human elements. The relationships and stresses and the examination of society through a future lens that both highlights our present and outlines a possible future.
You know. The “fi” part of sci-fi.
Anyway. I’m wading my way through a mountain of technobabble at the moment, establishing the rules for the universe in a way that my readers can quickly grasp them without having to spell them out. Scalzi spells out the rules sometimes by directed breaking of the 4th wall in his “Collapsing Empire” series, and he does that really well, and I freely admit that I’m borrowing heavily from his work in a few key areas. But I haven’t broken that wall just yet… maybe it would be simpler if I did? I’ll think about it, but for now I’m enjoying breaking several laws of physics.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
A Good Head of Steam
Yesterday wasn’t one of my official “writing days.” I have three of those a week (Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays) where I try to get most, if not all, of my words in.
But yesterday I got home and felt like I had a few thousand words in me… so I sat down and hammered out a chapter. Now, it’s rough, but that’s okay! That’s the point of a first draft… get all the words lined up one after another and then fix it all later. I’m really curious to see where I will end up adding more details… the worlds and cities I have described so far have been more like sketches rather than fully-fledged illustrations of the places in my mind. Again, that’s okay, I can add detail later.
But the point is that yesterday I basically wrote another chapter on a day I wasn’t expecting to write anything. And that felt really good. I love this part of the writing process (admittedly, I love many parts of the writing process!), when the ideas are all jumbled up in my brain and just waiting to get out. It feels good. It feels like I’m doing what I’m meant to be doing.
On that note, I’m going to go do what I’m meant to be doing, and write another couple chapters!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
The Trouble with Seat-of-Pantsing
I’m sure I’ve written it here before, but I’m fundamentally a “seat of the pants” writer most of the time. I’ve forced myself to get into the habit of writing outlines (and to take notes on characters as I write), but the majority of my work doesn’t start until I sit down to actually write the novel.
This is the opposite of somebody like, say, a Sanderson or a Martin, who need to have extensive notes and thorough plots before they start. Martin couldn’t keep all his characters straight, nor weave the intricate political machinations that he does, otherwise. And this isn’t a judgement… I really enjoy Sanderson and Martin! They have their faults, but so do all writers, and it shouldn’t detract from the things they do well. Martin in particular has a gift for naming multiple characters with the same name (which, let’s be honest, happens way more often in real life than it ever does in fiction) but still keep them distinct. Usually you know which Rob Stark is which!
My method (and the method of many writers much better than me… it’s not “my” method, it’s just the method I use!) allows for more spontaneity and surprise, both for me and for my audience, most of the time. But it requires way more work in editing. A really satisfying “sudden but inevitable” element to a book means that when you realize the “ah ha!” moment, you then have to go back and seed leading hints towards that moment throughout the work. And as much as I love writing, I’m not crazy about editing. It’s necessary, and I do a pretty okay job at it (and I have a professional editor who does a great job at it!), but most of the time I just want to write something else, rather than spending my time editing what I’ve already written.
These are the things I think about as I start a new novel (I mean, I’m on Chapter 5 at this point, but it’s still pretty early on). Have I left myself enough room that I can come back and add in the details I will later need? Is my story already too front-loaded… a constant threat when one writes sci-fi and you just want to spend three chapters describing all the cool tech and neat cultural shifts in your new galaxy.
Ah well. One nice thing about writing is that I can worry about all that later. For now, I’m just going to write my story!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!