The Gang

I joined a local writer's group through Meetup that started just recently.  We had our first session last night.  The group is pretty straightforward: sit down and write for two hours.  Quietly.  There was no workshopping and very little in the way of intros.

I was surprised by how much I did.  There was an hour of short story work followed by an hour of revisions.  After that, we spent about fifteen or twenty minutes going around the table speaking briefly about what we worked on.  The responses were pretty close to the chest, including mine.  A novel here.  A screenplay there.  Nothing about premises.  I guess we were all a little shy.  I passed along to one guy a suggestion on character descriptions that I heard from Justin Cronin when we met at Vroman's in Pasadena.  The guy, I think, took the advice with a hint of skepticism.  Perhaps I should have flipped him off with my MFA diploma, but I left that at home.

It was a pleasant evening aside from that minor discomfort.  We're having another writing session next Monday, but I'm a little wary because my tutoring schedule would conflict with it in a major way.  It's been a while since I've written alongside other people, so I'm willing to give this group a chance and see whether or not it'll make me more productive.

Digging In

The great thing about dealing with a potential burnout is knowing that the malaise will eventually subside and you'll feel all rejuvenated and hyper like an Asian Giant Hornet on speed.  Ironically, I think a helpful way of doing it is to look at your work.

Because I'm so job-hungry, I updated my curriculum vitae today (I have five).  I saw on my writing CV that I had six credits, most of them from within the last couple of years.  The weird thing was that feeling of it dawning on me that, yes, I have been writing.  It doesn't seem that way when you're editing at 11 PM or clawing your way towards your laptop at 6 AM when the sun's just coming out.

Then I looked at my binders of writing and saw that I had quite a bit stored up just from the last few months.  Short stories.  Articles.  Novel work.  Notes for upcoming projects.  A lot of it's still raw, but some are nearly ready for submission.

My point is that rather than feeling overwhelmed, I was pleasantly surprised to see evidence of hours, days, and weeks at the keyboard.  Unfinished?  Yes.  But a vague fog?  Hardly.

This doesn't sound like something I'd normally say, but if you're feeling like the work is getting to you, turn into a "glass is half-full" kind of person and take stock not of what lies ahead, but rather how much you've got behind you.  Many times, you'll see that the end of a project is closer than you think, and that'll get you charged for pushing the rest of the way.

Burning Out

It's been quite a week for me, not entirely for the best.  I feel totally drained like Dracula's been sucking me dry.  I don't even know which Dracula, but because I'm a fan, I'm going to say it's the Christopher Lee version.  Yeah, Chris was and still is a bad-ass.

It's been a week of frustrated tutoring and late nights of script reading.  Luckily, I've lightened my writing load a bit, but when I woke up mid-morning today feeling exhausted before I even got out of bed, I knew something was off.

I think a few things need to change this week so I get back on my energetic horse for the next.  I feel like I've been taking too many shortcuts with work, not exactly getting lazy but not exactly being focused either.  It's that sort of daze you get where you think you're work is fine enough to send it without proofreading, all in an effort to turn it in more quickly and get to bed sooner.  That's got to stop.

With writing, I should just accept that there are going to be days where I simply can't sit down at my laptop in the morning, days where I know I've overslept and can't recover that time later.  That's why I've got Saturday saved as a catch-up day.

But most of all, I think I need to stop kicking myself in the ass thinking it's a sign that I'm about to get the ax when a supervisor wants to offer feedback to improve my work.  On three separate occasions, friends of mine who've never met each other have said, "You're too hard on yourself."

Why Earth Go Boom?!

I was watching The Walking Dead a couple of weeks ago where Glenn met Abraham Ford's group en route to Washington DC, and there was a part where I almost had to laugh: just before they cut to commercial, Ford introduced one of his party, Eugene Porter (with a apocalyptic mullet), and said, "He knows exactly how this whole thing started."  Well, howdy doody, boys and girls!  I guess we can all go home!  By that point, given how irrevocably fucked the world is, does it really matter how the apocalypse began?

Does it matter how any apocalypse in fiction begins?

Some would say...maybe.

Audiences like to have answers, even if they're really crappy ones like the trees were just warning us.  Yeah, I'm looking at you, M. Night.  Other times, the story gets by without an explanation at all.  Yeah, I'm looking at you, Cormac McCarthy.

In rare cases, such as The Road or the 2011 film The Day, a mystery cause works perfectly fine because within the confines of the story, the cause is unnecessary.  The world went to hell.  People turned on each other.  Survivors must endure the wackiness.  Survival is almost always the universal theme of apocalyptic stories.

In other instances, the cause is integral to the story.  Even though The Walking Dead doesn't explain how the zombie plague began, what we do need to know is that zombies themselves were the reason for civilization's downfall.  What creates them isn't even important anymore, whether they're created from voodoo curses or government viruses...or radioactive contamination from a probe returning from Venus.  Yeah, I'm looking at you, George Romero.

In some cases, such as alien invasion stories, the details of the apocalypse become even more important because the threat is a thinking one that plans and forms strategies.  In order for the writer to get the most bang for the buck, the capabilities of the aliens need to be known.  Do they have force fields or ray guns?  Are they looking to annihilate all of mankind, or can a truce be made?  Do they even think like we do, or are they a hive mind like the Borg?

So yes, no, maybe so...the cause of the apocalypse is only important if your story demands it is.  If it does, hammer that stuff out and stick to those notes.  But be warned: overthinking the cause can lead to long bouts of procrastination.  This is one of the reasons why I've avoided writing science fiction lately.  Too much research can lead to some very cool ideas, but nothing that serves your story.

Think about the story first, and then retcon, reverse engineer, and backronym your disaster.

New Publication: Moving Pictures

Hi, everyone.  Just wanted to give you all a heads up that the latest installment of my Andrew Ursler series - Moving Pictures - is up at Arts Collide.  I hope you all enjoy it.

Promises and Ish

So when the new issue of Carpe Nocturne came out, I dived right in to see my reviews, to let my eyes graze upon the finished product of all my hard work.  The good news was that my review for World War Z did in fact get printed.  The bad news is that my reviews for Double Dead and Stake Land did not.

I'm not bitching and moaning and beating my chest crying, "It's not fair!"  True, I did put in a lot of hard work into those pieces and was looking forward to checking them out, but on the flip side, at least something got published, so I really got no right to complain.  I'm sure there were a number of reasons why they didn't see the finish line.  Maybe the editor forgot to include them.  I know he's had a lot on his plate lately.  Maybe the magazine didn't have enough space for everyone's articles and decisions had to be made about where to trim the fat.

No, I'm not upset with the magazine.  I am upset at me jumping the gun.  When I heard that the Double Dead and Stake Land reviews were slated for publication, I was so excited that I went ahead and told my friends and family.  First printed articles!  Woot woot!  And then I couldn't help but feel a little down when I had nothing to back up all my bragging.

My friend Ashley told me that it's not as unusual as I think.  She's had plenty of pieces endure such fates.  That's just something that happens.

Lesson learned: don't go tooting your horn about an article until you see it in print.

A Kick in the Ass

In the last month, on three separate occasions, people have told me that I'm too hard on myself.  It's starting to turn into one of those "if I had a nickel for every time someone said that to me" kind of deals.

I managed to get a tiny bit of writing done today.  It wasn't even on the day's agenda, but rather work I had to catch up on from yesterday.  I still got today's work to get through, and chances are I'm not going to be able to get to it; not tonight, not with other work that I've got piling on my plate.

And I can't help but hate myself for it.  On the one hand, I'm taking in as much work as I can trying to keep busy.  On the other hand, I'm getting bombarded to the point where others are telling me that they don't want to bombard me.  But not wanting anyone to be disappointed, I take on the work anyways.  Because I'm a dumb-shit.

I love it each morning when I got for a walk or a job.  It helps me think, and today I focused on the question: "How do I manage everything on my plate for efficiently?"

I got three things on my plate right now: the novel (1 hour of work), a short story (half an hour), and the new installment of the Andrew Ursler series (another half-hour).  Two hours altogether that could be messed up because I absentmindedly decide to sleep in or I've got internship work that simply can't be put off.  I could catch up in the evening, but I could also get more internship work, cave in, and spend what free time I had set aside on that rather than writing.

I like to take at least one day a week to veg out and try to get my brain to reset.  Saturdays work pretty well for me.  As much as it pains me to say this, I think the best thing to do is keep track of my writing hours and use that day off as a catch-up day.  In a given week, I have twelve hours of writing to do.  This week, I did four and a half hours so far, so if I get no writing done tomorrow, I'll have several hours to get caught up on Saturday.

That's several hours that could be spent reading, hanging out with friends, or, hell, just eating a shitload of pancakes.  So this isn't a method of punishment.  If I wanted to punish myself, I'd force myself to twice twice as many hours as the ones I missed.  Instead, it's another incentive to get my work done on time so I don't have as much to make up over the weekend.