GENREALITY

Back in my Preacher Boy days we had a term for ministers who had to work a second job.  We called them bi-vocational. 

Oddly enough, it’s also an apt term for most of the writers I know, too.  Only we talk in terms of day-jobs and writing careers instead of being bi-vocational.  And once you add that day-job to your family, relationships, friends and the rest of your life, you end up with a lot to balance along with the writing career.  And usually the lion’s share of any leftover time needs to go into actually writing or there won’t be a writing career to balance.

A lot of the time, all that really gets done is the writing.  Sometimes not even that gets done.  And then there’s the kajillion other things that also need to be done — answering emails, reviewing copyedits and galleys, updating websites, writing blogs (heh), keeping your social media going, connecting with other writers or editors.  But sometimes, the Writer Gods smile on you and you get a few activities that are more of the shiny happy authorial variety.  And sometimes they stack up into One Almighty Week. 

I’ve had one of those weeks and it’s been glorious.  And exhausting.  And completely mixed in with everything else life brings along…the good, the bad and the ugly.  I thought I’d just give you all a brief snapshot.

Monday:

• Rode 5 miles.
• Learned one of my best pals is back to battling cancer.   
• Day-jobbery.
• Writerly lunch with Jay Lake and Mike Garrison.
• Guest speaker at St Helens Bookshop’s Teen Writer Workshop — read “The Boy Who Could Bend and Fall,” led a writing exercise using the promp CENTER TAKES DAYS (ala Ken Rand’s From Idea to Story in 90 Seconds), and took questions.

Tuesday:

• Day-jobbery.
• Telecommuted part of the day due to Lizzy’s pink eye. 
• Rode 5 miles.
• Wrote not nearly enough words (for Talebones Live reading).
• Sang Lizzy and Rae to sleep.

Wednesday:

• Rode 5.5 miles.
• Day-job.
• Started Genreality Blog.
• Did laundry.
• Packed for Norwescon.

Thursday:

• Rode 5 miles.
• Kissed the wife and kids goodbye (won’t see Lizzy and Rae until Sunday afternoon.) 
• Worked a half day at day-job.
• Hitched a ride north for Norwescon with a Gracious North-Traveling Soul.
• Saw Sucker Punch.  Processed and discussed deep ponderings about Snyder’s intention as the storyteller.
• Heard Talebones Live was cancelled. 

Friday:

• Unexpected but important day-jobbery in the wee hours.
• Guest speaker in Patrick Swenson’s 8:00am high school English class — read “One Small Step.”  Used excuse of a trivial question book giveaway to ask some pointed questions about what made the story a fable about the dangers of humanity’s use of exploitation and voilence to solve problems
• Hang time, stock-signings and lunch with John “J.A.” Pitts.
• Got checked in, badged, ready for the con.  Met up with Jen once she made her way north. 
• Had dinner with Jen, Liz Coleman and my high school friend Vicki.
• Went to my scheduled reading and read “Grief-Stepping to the Widower’s Waltz” to a good sized audience.  The story was received well.
• Attended barcon and the pro party.  Introduced people, met people.  Sold a yet-to-be-written bit of flash fiction to KC Ball for $50 and a chair at the bar that didn’t actually belong to her.  Drank.  Bed.

And of course, that brings us to today.  Saturday.  Here’s my to-do list so far:

• Finish and post Genreality Blog (check!)
• High protein breakfast (check!)
• 10am panel on creating your own mythos with brilliant co-panelists.
• 11am panel on old plots and new narrative structures with more brilliant co-panelists.
• 3pm autograph session.
• 4-6pm co-teach workshop “The Evolution of a Writing Career” with Pitts.
• 7pm panel on breaking into print with yet more brilliant co-panelists.
• Go to parties and attend bar-con.  Introduce people, meet people.  Drink.  Go to bed.

Tired?  Oh hell yes.  And I’m not through Saturday yet.  As an introvert, anything I do that involves people tends to drain off my battery.  The larger the group, the larger the drain.   And more interactions means more tired.  With the week I’ve had, I was getting a Low Battery message before Friday showed up.  But it’s worth every bit of Weary I’ve earned along the way.

And at the end of the week, I’m being exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up, doing what I wanted to do. 

As my grandfather used to say:  “That’s not too shabby.”

You’ve heard that one before, right?

It’s something we often take for granted until either we or someone we love doesn’t have it anymore.  Then we sit up and take notice. 

If you’re following me on Facebook, you’ll know a bit more about what my own health has been up to this last eighteen months or so.  It was significant enough — combined with the craziness of Shiny New Twins — to largely shut down my writing. 

After years of being able to “call down the words” whenever I needed to, it was a frustrating experience.  More than frustrating, it put me behind on my publishing schedule, significantly impacted my finances, and bled over into other aspects of the writing business.  I found myself withdrawing from conventions and hiding out more and more.  Already pretty introverted, I found the energy suck of large groups utterly draining…and no matter how much rest I got, I couldn’t get those batteries to hold a charge.  I even found myself saying, more than once, “Why am I blogging here about writing when I’m not actually writing?”  Loss of health became loss of confidence and even, on some days, a loss of hope. 

I found myself moving slowly in fits and starts – I call it driving with the brake on.  My word count for the year plummetted to less than a quarter of my usual output and my “speed limit” dropped from an easy 1k wph (words per hour) to anything between zero to five hundred wph.  More zero than not. 

Naturally, I kept trying.  It became even more frustrating.  I saturated myself with Story, I went on writing retreats, I went back over the words I did have.  Nothing stuck for very long.

Early on, when I realized what was happening and understood it, I jumped into finding solutions (my tendency is to be pretty tenacious about my well-being.)  I was trying everything and finding little that worked.  Then I discovered an experimental treatment that had upwards of 90% effectiveness but the catch was I had to go to Chicago.

Seven weeks ago, I went for my first treatment and saw results in less than fifteen minutes.  My energy and focus came back and I started digging myself out of the hole.  Most of my symptoms completely vanished.  And when I went back for my second treatment last week, already feeling amazingly good, I found myself feeling even better.

This week, I’ve actually written more in two days than I’ve written in the previous three months.  I’m back on my bike at 3am, writing at 3:30am, and I’m having no problem whatsoever finding my words.  I’m even enjoying it all again. 

After a long stretch of feeling like Someone Else, I finally feel like Me again.  And of course, writing is just one place where I was impacted.  But all of the nooks and crannies of my life are back online and functioning well. 

I’m still adjusting to that.  After so much time not feeling well, feeling great seemed…unusual.  I was even a bit suspicious of it.  And not just me:  the people around me were also watching quietly to see if this indeed would take.  But with each good week, I’ve found myself feeling more and more confident that I indeed have my health back.  People are telling me they see the difference.

Whether its health issues, the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, a change in careers, we’re all human and subject to Life Happening.  And when Life Happens, it’s going to hit us in all the places where we live.  Sometimes, we can soldier on and get everything done that we need to.  Sometimes, we can’t.  And it’s okay.

But the next time someone reminds us that at least we have our health, we can pause a moment, think about it, remember what the alternative feels like, and be grateful.  Because not everyone gets to turn the corner. 

Whenever we do get to, a bit of rejoicing is in order.

It’s good to be back. 

Happy Saturday, folks.

Happy New Year, Everyone!  I hope you all had good holidays. 

By the time this posts, I’ll be in a remote, internet-free beach-side house on a much needed writing retreat, digging back into Requiem after a bit of time away dealing with Other Things.

Today is a good day to dare.

I like dares.  I’ve already given one here a few months back.  And I give them out all the time.  I think it’s because they’re so effective in my own writing process.  Lamentation was written on a dare.  And back when I was writing towards themed anthologies, I was fueled by the dare of landing a hopefully clever story that worked.  I turned it into a game in my head and it never let me down.

So this morning, I was looking over some stories by a high school writer whose parents are friends of ours.  After seeing she had talent and was learning skill, I recommended some tools for her and then gave her a dare.  Today’s post is adapted from that email and I’m extending the dare to any of you out there who are up for it.

This is a dare.  You do not have to take it.  And you shouldn’t unless you can make it fun for you.
 
I want you to write me a story.
 
It needs to have a character I can care about (either love or hate)…with a problem I can identify with…in a place that feels real.  And after the character is introduced to their problem, they need to try to solve it and then fail, once and then twice, each time the failure making it look more and more like they’ll never possibly solve it.  Then, on the third try have them either solve it and be rewarded or fail and learn a valuable lesson.
 
You have all the time in the world if you take this dare.  No deadline because that’s a lesson for another day.  And it doesn’t have to be a good story.  It just as to be done.  Turn it into a game – spend time thinking about what kind of character and problem and place.  Try on different ideas.  If you’re stuck for ideas, use this trick I learned from my friend Ken Rand:  Take a book, open it up, drop your finger in and write down the first proper noun you see.  Then do the same thing again but only with a verb.  And then again with another proper noun.  Like this:
 
I’m using my book Lamentation.  The words I pulled are:  FOOLS HEAR RING 
 
Now, I take those three words and I brainstorm either in my head or on paper.  Fools…okay, I’ll use fools as my character.  A band of fools.  Foolish people?  No, a Jester.  Hear…what does my jester hear?  He hears a ring.  A bell?  A phone?  The ring of steel on steel?  No, I’m a fantasy writer so I’d want a story that was weirder than that.  The jester actually hears a ring.  I like that better.  And then suddenly, I have a story idea and I just start writing:
 
Dragons, Lasrus the Fool thought, make lousy audiences.
 
Of course, he couldn’t have known that.  He’d never played a dragon’s lair before.  Throne rooms and town squares certainly.  But never a dragon. 

And he’d tried his best material.  The puppets elicited a yawn.  The juggling got him a growl.  The puns actually brought about a threatened barbecuing.  Two hours of sweating off his facepaint and Lasrus hadn’t gotten a single laugh.  “It’s because,” he thought aloud, ”dragons have no sense of humor.”
 
“No,” a voice said off to his left.  “It’s because you’re not very funny.”
 
He looked around, seeing no one in the dim, expansive cave he followed back to the surface and his waiting pony.  “Who said that?”
 
“I did.”
 
The voice came from a small pile of gems and coins.  The entire cave had been filled the stuff and he’d eventually stopped noticing.  He walked to it and leaned down.  “Who?”
 
“Me.” 
 
Lasrus’s eye fell on the ring now.  “Rings don’t talk.”
 
“Well,” the ring said, “that makes this a bit awkward.”
 
Lasrus snorted at the words.  “Now that was funny.”
 
“Exactly.”  The ring paused.  “And I can make you funny, too…for a price.”
 
Lasrus the Fool blinked.  ”How can you do that?”
 
“Easy.  You put me on.  I make you funny.  Ever hear of the Jester Deryl?”
 
Lasrus nodded.  Every fool know about Deryl.  His reputation stretched over seven kingdoms and his fame had exceeded even that of Andro Giantslayer.  A realization dawned on him.  “He was killed by a dragon.”
 
“Exactly,” the ring said.  “And here I am.  At your service.”
 
Lasrus’s eyes narrowed.  “Didn’t you mention a price?”
 
“Yes.  I did.”
 
He licked his lips and reached for the ring.  “What price?”
 
The ring was silent.
 
“What price?”
 
“Not much,” it finally said.  “Just one dead dragon.”
 
There.  I ended up with an entire scene.  All just brainstormed here, as soon as I had those three words.  No polish yet and I haven’t even checked for typos.  Just words.  I could easily (and probably will) finish it up one of these days – probably add another four or five scenes of Lasrus trying to figure out a way to kill the dragon — and send it off to an editor. 

So you try it out.  I dare you.

Go write me a story.

I do a lot of reflecting between Thanksgiving and my birthday (in January.)  It’s a time where I ponder the past, present and future and among other things, this year I’ve been thinking a lot about how my writing career has evolved over the years.

I was sitting in my den the other night and feeling warm and cozy in the midst of my roomful of books.  Right there, just to my right, was the shelf of writing books I devoured back in the day.  I still go back to them from time to time and thought that today, I’d talk about some of the ones that have stuck with me.

I became a writer because of Ray Bradbury’s essay “How to Keep and Feed a Muse.”  I first read it in a textbook called On Writing By Writers.  I still have it, but imagine my delight when I stumbled across his book Zen in the Art of Writing.  It collects that essay and several others. 

I wrote a bit in an earlier post about a few other books I’ve found helpful:

First, there’s the Handbook of Short Story Writing, Volumes 1 and 2.  Another good one is Stephen King’s On Writing:  A Memoir of the Craft.  And if you can find it in a library or borrow it from a friend, the out of print Writing to the Point by Algis Budrys…because really it’s brilliant but $99 is a bit steep. 

I came to writing through the short story so the articles and essays collected in the two volume Handbook of Short Story Writing were very helpful.  And I re-read the King book just about once a year.  As far as the Budrys book, I still think his short little book on writing — in hindsight — is one of the very best and most practical books in my library. 

My late friend Ken Rand  has two short books that I think are a must for every writer.  The Ten Percent Solution is a great book for self-editing to sharpen your prose…and I’ve seen it work for lots of writers.  The other one on my shelf is From Idea to Story in 90 Seconds, which I had the pleasure of watching Ken teach just a few years before he passed.  One of the exercises was brainstorming an idea from three randomly chosen words, and my story “Summer in Paris, Light from the Sky” is a product of the words HITLER LEADS WHISKEY.  I literally brainstormed the rough idea of the story in 90 seconds, there in Ken’s class, and then the next week I wrote it.

Last on the list is a surprising book that is really intended for screenwriting.  But I found it amazingly helpful when I sat down to write my first novel.  Robert McKee understands storytelling very well and has broken it down nicely in his book Story.   I’d heard about it from a friend (I wish I could remember which so I could thank them) and Jen bought it for me one year for our anniversary.  Just his section on three act structure is worth the cover price.

So there are a few books that have helped me along the way.  Something to think about for that gift card Santa’s sure to leave in your stocking or for that writer in your life that’s hard to buy for here in the last days before Christmas.

What about you?  What writing books have you found helpful?

Howdy folks!  Happy Saturday.  Today, I’m going to talk about the care and feeding of my muse and inner redneck, Leroy Larry Leroux.

Leroy is a mullet-wearing, gap-toothed, scrawny little beer-swiller who drives a pickup truck and can be quite fussy at times when it comes to his way of getting work done.  He has a love/hate relationship with the Story Factory’s Quality Assurance Manager and frequently resorts to all sorts of hyjinx to keep the QA guy off the production line.

Leroy is good at what he does when he shows up.  He can bend stories out of just about anything he finds and when he’s really cranking, he puts out a thousand words an hour of fiction.

And Leroy is moody and lazy at his best, though if I take good care of him, he takes good care of me.  The problem is, sometimes, in the craziness of my life, I forget that. 

Over the last little while, I’ve been up against one of the worst writing blockades I’ve come across and that’s gotten me a bit cranky with my muse.  But Leroy is pretty good about digging his heels in even more when I mistreat him.  So once I figured out that I was beating the golden goose as it were, I stepped back and decided to take a more neutral position.

Something interesting happened. 

First, nostalgia.  I started remembering all of the different places where Story intersected with my life.  Story was a type of foster home for me as a child — books, TV, movies, games, comics.  And I found myself having flashbacks of sorts to those days reading in trees and under the trailer and in the woods and on rooftops.  Remembering my love affair with TV Guide, reading it each week and memorizing all the shows I hoped to watch.  Everything from westerns to martial arts to sci/fi and horror. 

And with the nostalgia, I started to realize that in addition to NOT bludgeoning the muse, I really needed to take better care of him and feed him a bit.  In order to make Story, you gotta eat Story.

So I let Leroy follow his nose this past two weeks and we’ve been at the trough.  I contemplated reading but since my writing and reading muscles don’t play well together, we opted for movies.  Something where I can disengage my writerly eye a bit more and let the Story do its work on me. 

It’s been quite the buffet.  We started with David Lynch’s Dune.  Then there was Catch Me If You Can, Bounce, Splice, Harry Brown, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallos, Stranger than Fiction, The Man from Laramie, The Shop Around the Corner, Cast Away, Tootsie, Behind Enemy Lines, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (though I missed some of it), Orange County and…well, I’m leaving some out.  A Lot of Movies.  All in the span of two weeks or so. 

And you know what?  It’s working.  I’m thinking about MY Story again and I’m realizing that at least some of what’s in my way is the starvation diet I’ve had my muse on while standing over him demanding that he give me my words.

It is easy to sometimes forget that before there were deadlines, advances and royalty statements there was simply Story and the way we felt when we sat at its table.

So what about you?  Are you feeding your muse?