Reflection

NaNoWriMo 2018 Day 15 (11/15)

Chris Leave a comment

Every morning, as I wake up and stare at the glow of my alarm clock while hoping it isn’t about to start buzzing with that nail-on-chalkboard screech, I begin a routine. Usually, the routine is a series of alarm snoozes so I can pretend dozing off between the alarms on my phone is enough to make up for staying up until two in the morning. Sometimes, the routine is staring at the ceiling as I ignore my alarms and slowly begin the mental process of building my ‘self’ into a person who can deal with the day. Those days are the ones I dread most of all. These are the days that not even momentum can help.

There’s usually enough of me leftover from one day to the next that I can roll from waking to walking without needing time to fix my ‘self’ up or spend time rebuilding my ‘self’ before I get out of bed. But not always. Some nights, it all vanishes in a haze of unremembered dreams whose emotions linger on, leaving me with nothing but the wispy fog of my depression turning whatever solid pieces remain into  indistinguishable lumps. As my anxieties call out from indiscernible locations, I slowly feel my ‘self’ dissolve into the fog until all that’s left is my awareness.

Thankfully, the fog is not a trap so much as the valleys around the mountain-filled countryside that is the metaphor for my self-experience. There are still the heights above the fog and a clear, sunny sky can sometimes break through it as the day goes on, but I must still escape the valley if I want to climb the mountain–I still need purpose if I want to work on my goals. Knowing the heights are there will not help me reach them. I must first build my ‘self’ back up so I can walk out of the fog.

To be clear, there are limits to this metaphor. I am still myself, even when I feel as if I’ve dissolved in fog. What I lose is direction. I am no longer a person with a point or a goal to accomplish. Instead, I feel like a lump of traits stuffed into a body and let loose upon the day. I can function like that without negative impact on my mood or health, but I do not enjoy feeling listless. I am all of myself at all times, I think we all are, no matter who we try or pretend to be, but, on these days of shapelessness, I  am constantly all of myself. I cannot focus myself to a point. I cannot assume an identity. I cannot be a person who does specific things like act extroverted at work or set aside my desire to rest and play video games for the difficult work of writing towards my goals. I cannot be one thing if I am everything all at once.

So I build. I take the central parts of myself–the things I am certain are me–such as my will to push forward no matter how slowly, and use them to create a solid base that I can trust even if it disappears behind the fog immediately. I start assembling layers on top of that, made of my fundamental beliefs about the world and the person I want to be. I call to mind my goal to leave the world a better place than I found it. I remind myself that most people are good and willing to help each other, even if they’re also quiet about it. From there I keep adding layers, using wisdom, experience, and belief to build a ‘self’ that will be able to climb out of this valley, escape this fog, and eventually climb the mountain of my self-experience again.

The last layers, the ones that add depth instead of height or size, are made up of the person I want to be today. It will influence everything, from the point I’m trying to reach in my climb to how I go about climbing my way there. It is not a decision easily made. Will I be quiet and focused? Determined to succeed at my own goals but perhaps a little less engaged with the people around me? Will I be supportive and considerate, taking energy I could have spent on my own goals to do what I can to help people achieve theirs? What does climbing the mountain even mean to me? Why am I doing it?

These are difficult questions, some days, and they require a lot of thinking. I do not always have the time to answer them while I am in bed, so it is often well into a particular morning before I am finished building. Most of my routines are not conducive to the kind of contemplation and reflection required to weigh these questions efficiently, and my job is even less so. But this last layer, the drive and purpose I assign myself, comes from thinking about the questions even if I never come up with any answers. I cannot spend the whole day ignoring it and still wish I could make myself focus on climbing the mountain.

A single day of good construction can last a while, often taking me through the entire length of a climb, but accidents can happen. Rock slides, eruptions, sudden storms. All of them are things that will wash me down into the valley again and the ‘self’ I made doesn’t always survive the trip. In the past, it has never been a problem to pick my ‘self’ up, fix my ‘self,’ and then get back to climbing, even if I wind up climbing a new mountain.

I’ve had a lot of these inclement moments in the past year, in addition to the occasional day when I wake up and have lost my ‘self.’ I am only recently discovering that repeated instances of this make it increasingly difficult to put myself together again, and not for the reasons I initially suspected. I am not losing sight of the mold, I am finding myself questioning parts of my ‘self’ I haven’t questioned in years. There is some value to this, of course, as improvement only happens through some examination and refinement, but there comes a point when any further examination is similar to repeating the word “bowl” a few dozen times. It starts to lose all meaning and what was once a simple word starts to sound alien.

I don’t think there’s a way I can hurry this process without building a ‘self’ that will be too haphazard to survive a bit of rain, let alone a mudslide or blizzard. These mountains are dangerous places and I need to be sure of what I’m doing. At the same time, I should probably do a better job of moving through the first few steps. In twenty-seven years of depression, trauma, pain, love, strength, and joy, nothing has changed my core belief that I want to add to the world. I shouldn’t take that for granted as it could lead me to overlook any cracks or flaws that might appear in the future, but I can safely assume that, if this piece of me is still in good condition, it’s going to be the base.

I can cut down on the amount of time it takes to form the basis of my ‘self’ and spend more time focusing on the more difficult parts. Perhaps I should even take some time to do maintenance while climbing the mountain instead of just pushing on until my ‘self’ falls apart. I have a lot of options worth considering and I know I need to start considering them if I am going to make it through the rest of this year. Or however long this tumultuous period of my life lasts.

 

Daily Prompt

If your protagonist was given the chance to get everything they’ve ever wanted in exchange for giving up on whatever goal they’re pursuing in your story, would they take it? Protagonists rarely have easy lives, so the offer of having their dreams come true could be incredibly tempting, especially if whatever is offering this bargain can show them the trials they have yet to overcome in their journey. Would it be an agonizing decision for them? Would it be a simple one? What would they choose and why? Write a scene today that shows your protagonist facing this sort of temptation, of having a wish granted in exchange for giving up on a goal, and show their ultimate decision. Maybe they use the wish to get the goal anyway. Maybe they wind up making the right choice by giving up on their goal and using the wish to address the source of the problem they were trying to fix according to someone else’s wishes rather than their own

 

Sharing Inspiration

One of the ways I get most of my ideas is from conversations I’ve overhead. Especially at work since I’m usually not listening for them and out-of-context quote are some of the best places to get ideas. Without the full context, things like “Spiritual Hard Hat” and “Cyborg Anatomy” are just so open for interpretation and improvisation that it almost makes it difficult to pick a place to start. Other good places to go for this are malls  and crowded restaurants during lunch hours. Just put in some ear buds in and don’t play any music. You’d be surprised what people are willing to talk about in public if they think they won’t be overheard.

 

Helpful Tips

If you pursue a career as a writer or spend any significant amount of time learning from professional writers by reading what they share on Twitter, you will eventually have to confront the fact that “Writer’s Block” is a bunch of bullshit. There’s no such thing. What is so special about writers that we can have some mysterious condition that prevents us from writing? Patrick Rothfuss has a good bit about it, making the point that plumbers can’t have Plumber’s Block. Sure, there are days when Plumbers just can’t work, but that’s not a result of a mysterious condition, that’s the result of them being sick or injured. The same is true of writing. If you can’t write, chances are good that there’s something going on inside your head that is preventing you from writing. A lot of the time, it’s the result of poor choices like not sleeping enough, not taking care of your mental health, or leaving things until the last moment so the fear of failure brought on by the nearness of the impending deadline cripples you. There are lots of reasons you might be unable to write, but exactly zero of them are “Writer’s Block.”

I’m not saying this to rain on your parade or make you feel guilty. I’m not even saying this to take away a simple explanation for a whole host of issues, much like we say we’re sick when are physical health is below the minimum required to go out and do things with people. I’m saying this because it is a truth you need to confront so you can actually work on healing or recovering from whatever is in your way. If you go around blaming “Writer’s Block” for it like it’s a problem you can only inspire away or wait to pass, you’re going to get stuck there constantly. The next time you think you’re being held back by writer’s block, take some time to comb through your mind and figure out what’s really going on. I promise it’ll be worth it.

NaNoWriMo 2018 Day 14 (11/14)

Chris Leave a comment

Well, yesterday was also a bust. I got a couple hundred words written, but sleep deprivation and the temptation of a new Fallout game coupled with the temptation of the updated Spyro game proved too strong for me. Instead of writing, I played some Fallout 76, got Chinese food, watched my roommate relive Spyro, and then went to bed. That was plenty for yesterday, to be honest.

As you can clearly see by today’s rather late post, today isn’t much better. I’ve been trying to ride the line between cutting down on my goals for this month and getting enough rest to recover from the emotional and stress burnout resulting from the combined week of being super busy with extrovert stuff at work and dealing with the news about my grandfather’s health. As it turns out, the line between then is on the wrong side of “getting enough rest.” and I’ve actually been getting worse instead of better. Unfortunately, it took me three busy days at work and three nights without enough sleep to realize that. At least the last night of not enough rest wasn’t a dumb choice this time. I just couldn’t sleep, which is a frequent side-effect of long-lasting high-stress periods and burnout.

It took a Vlog brothers update for me to realize what was going on, too. I was under the impression that I’d just kick it into gear like I always do during periods like this and eventually get everything done. I can pull of some pretty ridiculous stuff when the situation is right, but I rarely do it when I’m already burned out and tired from previous times I pulled off something ridiculous. Like spending a week talking to people and running meetings every day that should have been spent quietly while processing the storm of emotions that comes from learning my grandpa, who gave me most of my nice clothes and my favorite jacket because we are the same size. Well, we used to be. The same grandpa who loves telling me about his coin collection and who has gotten me interested in the history and stories behind rare coins. It’s difficult to see a future without him in it, even if I’ve always know I’d get there eventually.

I always try to make excuses for continuing my writing. I often say it’s therapeutic, that it helps me work through difficult emotions and complex thoughts that need some adjusting before I can really see the shape of them. What I conveniently leave out every time I tell myself this is that the therapeutic part comes from doing free-form writing exercises, like my Sunday flash fiction, Friday poetry, or Saturday musing posts. I’m not going to get anything therapeutic from working on a story I’ve already formed without putting in the work to significantly change it. Some stories I could work it into, but not either of the ones I’m working on this month. I’d have to change them so much they’d be completely different stories and maybe even different genres. The closest I get to therapeutic writing is the reflection part of every day’s National Novel Writing Month post and part of me feels guilty for putting all this in here since I’m really not sure how much of this you all want to read. I originally planned to write about my progress here and how the writing stuff was going, but I’ve spent half of the month doing almost no writing so that’s kind of a bust.

Maybe the answer is giving up on the romance novel. I’ve barely written any of that, only a couple thousand or so words, and I’m already planning to rewrite those words entirely so it would make sense to just stop trying to do that. I already gave up on trying to do Coldheart and Iron posts every Tuesday, still. I did, however, just shift my plans so I’d do four Coldheart and Iron posts ahead of time, to be posted from December first to December fourth, so I’d be entirely caught up as of that Tuesday and so I could take a break to rest up from a month of writing like crazy. I don’t want to stop the blog because I’m really proud of my consistency here. Daily posts. Even if the post is going up at half an hour before midnight because I almost forgot and had a wedding, so all I could do is copy and paste a poem I’d been saving for an emergency into the WordPress app on my phone and then post it without fixing the weird crap WordPress does to my typical poetry formatting. This matters to me. I’ve done a year of posts, but I’d still like to be able to say “I did this thing for the entirety of 2018.” I’d also like to say that about 2019. I wouldn’t mind being able to say that about every year. It’s kind of a big deal and I can’t imagine it not having a positive impact on my life. Plus, I don’t really want to be one of those writers who lands a publishing deal that allows me to support myself on my writing who then stops doing stuff like my free blog.

I love writing. I love stringing words together and turning my ideas into stories. I love sharing my writing on the off-chance that it could help someone else and I love having a place to put this stuff that makes me feel seen, even if it’s only by one person in a day. I’d love to be able to throw sense to the wind and just pump out the rest of my writing goals in the seventeen days (counting today) I have left in the month, especially because I know I could probably do it. I also know the burnout would be catastrophic unless I took more time off of work and I really can’t afford that. Next week’s time away from work for US Thanksgiving won’t be the break it usually is, either, since I’ll be spending more time with family on account of my grandfather’s declining health. It’ll just be another weekend. My last weekend to make up for any lost time.

I have a lot of really good reasons to dial down my goals, especially considering I’ll still break ninety-thousand words this month even if I just stick to my blog and my National Novel Writing Month project. That’d be a new record of words written in a month for me, which is an admirable goal in its own right. I still want to throw my trepidation and good sense to the wind by stubbornly declaring I’ll stick to my original goals, though. Even now. I’ve actually deleted the words I wrote saying that. I need to rest and, as much as it pains me to say it, I don’t think I can do everything I said out to do this month. Just the thought of trying to do everything is overwhelming, and being overwhelmed takes more time than I’d like to give it.

This feels a lot like defeat, but it isn’t. It’s a chance to actually succeed without hurting myself. It’s going to take a lot of mental repetition to make that thought stick, but it’s true. I hope your goals are going better than my original ones are. I hope they’re going as well as my adjusted goals are, since I’m not far off track when it comes to those. Either way, I believe in your ability to do this and I wish you the best of luck today and tomorrow.

 

Daily Prompt

Failure is a part of life. Failure also makes for good stories because most people find characters who do nothing but succeed to be rather boring. There are a thousand proverbs and parables about learning from failure but success is often seen as the end of the road. That being said, failure can be difficult to overcome or to work through, and some people are better at it than others. How does your protagonist handle failure, big or small? If they fail, are they pushed on to try harder next time or do they feel defeated or beaten? Show your protagonist responding to failure (you can include the part where they fail, but that’s not necessary) and how it informs the way they decide to move forward in your story.

 

Sharing Inspiration

If you want some more examples of excellent storytelling, then you need to check out Hamilton. This musical is one of the best, most-clever bits of writing I’ve ever had the pleasure to witness and the musical itself is a work of absolute beauty. The lyrics and music are stunning, constantly referencing itself, foreshadowing future events, and so damn catchy I still haven’t gotten the music out of my head three months later. Not that I want it out, either. Even though it’s pretty sad in the end and it feeds into one of my biggest fears (of never having enough time), I still can’t stop listening to it. This is one of those things that marks a turning point in the way the world functions. After Hamilton, musical theater has a whole new dimension to it and anyone going for the standard “classic” stuff is missing out on the brand new world Lin-Manuel Miranda has opened our eyes to.

 

Helpful Tips

I have a really bad habit of keeping snacks and drinks on hand for when I’m writing. Which generally means keeping them on hand as distractions from writing since I usually avoid any potential for getting my keyboard messy or wet, which means stopping my writing so I can have a snack while browsing twitter on my phone. This is a bad habit since it tends to promote both overeating and procrastination. It distracts me from getting words written and adds to what is typically a rather sedentary month for me since I work at a computer in my day job and then go right to my computer after work. Today’s tip is to find something that replaces the desire to snack with something more useful. I’d suggest gum, but I can’t stand it. Instead, I keep a bag of sourdough pretzels nears my computer. Since they have no dust or crap that sticks to your fingers, they’re safe to use with a keyboard. They’re also salty and really dusty, so they’re not something I can eat a lot of in any short amount of time. I’ll eat maybe two during a few hours of writing, which is a single serving. They also make me thirsty, which is where my gallon jug of water comes in. I drink about one of those an evening which keeps me well hydrated and makes me want to focus so I can get stuff written between hourly trips to the bathroom to deal with the excess liquid. It’s a process and it works for me, since it cuts down the crap I consume and it helps me maintain my focus on writing more. I don’t know if that’ll work for you, but exploring the ideas wouldn’t hurt.

NaNoWriMo 2018 Day 13 (11/13)

Chris Leave a comment

Well, I wound up not doing much writing last night. I was going to play a game, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, for a couple of hours and then get down to writing, but then it was almost midnight and I’d written nothing. So I wrote a bit so I could maintain my National Novel Writing Month streak and then went back to gaming. Between the last two nights, I’ve gotten about seven hours of sleep. Needless to say, I’m no longer allowed to play that game on week nights. It’s too addicting. I literally made excuses to keep playing for just one more quest/fight/look at the kingdom map/trip to the shopkeeper to sell something I decided I didn’t need from seven until one thirty in the morning.

Today, Fallout 76 comes out and I get a long anticipated book, Seth Abramson’s Proof of Collusion, so I’m going to be doing my best to stay focused and writing tonight. We’ll see how it goes, though. I have been using a therapy light at work and its been helping enormously, but it can’t exactly make up for the low amount of sleep I’ve been getting. That being said, it’s been helping far more than I anticipated or even hoped. For example, it’s telling that I forgot there was a difference between being tired from not getting enough rest and being tired because I’m incredibly depressed. I now remember what the difference is and feel more capable of handling my lack of sleep because I’ve been spending thirty or more minutes every morning with the lamp on while I do stuff on my work computer. I like it so much I’m going to be getting myself one for home use since I do not want to be without the incredible benefits of this device. I’m willing to bet some of this is the placebo effect, but it’s such a big change that I can’t write all of it off to that. It’s like night and day. I was down and ready for a long week of feeling depressed on Monday morning, but then I plugged in the therapy lamp.

If you can spare the money for one and struggle with depression that is generally worse in the winter months when you’re getting less sunlight, I suggest getting one for yourself. If you suffer from any kind of Seasonal Affective Disorder, I suggest getting one of these therapy lights. It’s really helpful and the UV protected ones don’t hurt your eyes if you wind up looking into them. I’m still figuring this whole thing out so I can’t speak to all of the benefits since I’m having trouble pinpointing exactly how it makes me feel, so I’ll probably write about this again sometime. Plus, I want to give it some time to see its effects in the long-term.

I’ve had so much going on lately that I really enjoyed being able to set everything aside to just play video games for a couple of days and there’s still a part of me that wants to keep doing that since writing for any length of time is hard work. With my grandfather, the changing seasons, the slow shift of my country’s government toward authoritarianism, the uncomfortable truth that we’re probably dooming our planet, and the unfortunate truth of life that every relationship I have won’t necessarily be what I want it to be no matter what I do, I’ve had a lot of big subjects on my mind. Video games are a way to escape them and writing, for me, is a way to come to terms with them. To process them. Which means it’s a lot of work to write anything because there are all these weighty emotions struggling for attention inside me and I need to be mindful of their influence so I can address them properly instead of having them spill into everything. I just feel like my mind is pretty cluttered right now and trying to pull out the right bits for writing is taking a lot more work than it usually does. It’s really tempting to not do that work and focus on resting instead. It’s also probably healthy to do that since I probably need an extended break from all of this writing and day job stuff since I use a break from one to focus on the other or just try to jam both into every day of my life.

As I told someone this morning, my main trait is will power. If it’s an absolute thing, like posting or writing every day, I can do it. I talked with them about this other thing in a more complimentary light originally, but further reflection has made it pretty clear that, tied in with the will power thing, my main vice is obsession. Surprise, the guy with severe OCD tends to get obsessed with things easily. I can make it work for me, usually in the form of making me stick with habits no matter how difficult or tiring they sound at any given time, but there are times it gets out of hand. Any time I push myself too hard with my writing or my work, any time I get too focused on details or minutiae, any time I get a dumb thought stuck in my head, that’s the obsession. It’s also why I have a hard time relaxing or doing nothing. It’s why I never just take vacations. I mean, I haven’t taken a day off of posting or writing in over a year. That’s a long time to go without a break. I’ve tried to get a blog post buffer set up so I can take a few days off of writing, but I always wind up writing anyway.

I don’t really have a conclusion here, I’m just trying to be more honest with myself about the positive and negative aspects of my life and how I spend my time. It’s almost as if I’ve had to confront mortality lately. Sure, it’s indirect, but it’s there. Nothing lasts forever and I want to make sure I’m acting in my own long-term best interest without (and this is the new part) making too many sacrifices here and now. The long-term is great, but nothing is worth three years of misery or living like a pauper or constantly engaging in a vicious cycle of burning myself out and subsequently crashing until I’ve recovered just enough to start working again.

Sorry if you came here looking for something upbeat or positive. I’ll pencil that in for later this week once I’ve gotten more sleep and untangled the web of emotions and thoughts that’s tying me up right now. I hope your month is going well, though, and today especially. I hope your writing goals are going swimmingly and I want to remind you, as I’m constantly reminding myself these days, that goals are important since they give us something to strive for, but make sure they’re something within reach and don’t be afraid to reassess if something changes your reach. Good luck!

 

Daily Prompt

Everyone needs to blow off some steam occasionally. Stress tends to build up rather quickly when you’re the protagonist of a story. How does your protagonist try to relax when it seems like they’re drowning in stress? Do they even get a chance to catch their breath, or are they constantly being harried and unable to take a break to get themselves in order? Write a scene in which your protagonist tries to relax. Whether they succeed or not is entirely up to you, but show us how they handle their stress and their success or failure since a failure is bound to only make them feel worse and success could give them an opportunity to reflect and grow.

 

Sharing Inspiration

One of my all-time favorite books is “The Name of the Wind” by Patrick Rothfuss. In terms of complex and skilled writing, I’d rank him near the top of all writers I’ve ever read. I’m willing to concede this is just my opinion, but I could make a strong argument given the foreshadowing, complexity of storytelling, and just how much information there is that could be foreshadowing but maybe is just world information. We don’t know yet! The story isn’t finished and there’s just so much left to resolve that it’d be impossible to wrap it all up in just one book. There’s no guarantee that all of it will get wrapped up or nicely tied together, but I can hope. I love his writing because it gives me something to aspire to as a writer.

 

Helpful Tips

Don’t be afraid to reach out for help if you need it. Trying to work through a difficult passage? Grab a book that does something similar to what you’re trying! Not sure if what you’re trying to convey is coming out in your writing and it’s a big enough thing that you want to get it worked out right now? Find an alpha reader! Share your work with them and get their thoughts! Not sure how to move along with the current scene and unable to figure out where you can skip ahead to? Ask other writers for advice or suggestions! My inbox and the comments on my blog are always open if you’ve got questions or just need someone to talk to who gets the struggles of writing. There’s nothing wrong with opening up a bit to dump out some of the stuff going on in your head. That’s part of why I write this blog. There are many reasons, of course, but it’s super helpful to have a place I can dump all this out. I can’t promise I’ll always respond right away, but I can promise I will eventually respond.

NaNoWriMo 2018 Day 12 (11/12)

Chris Leave a comment

Well, I had a marginally effective day yesterday, despite deciding at 10:45 pm that I was just going to do maybe two hundred words of writing so I could keep my daily update streak going on the National Novel Month writing website. I wound up doing ten times that in about an hour and then decided to also write the blog update for today before going to bed as well, instead of waiting until the morning to do it like I’d planned when I’d decided yesterday was going to be a low-key day. Honestly, I really needed it. Yesterday was the only day I had that wasn’t stressful in one way or another since I got news that my grandfather’s cancer was back in a way that meant all the treatment options were more about making him comfortable rather than curing him. Also, I did enough processing around the video game playing to finally get my feet under me and get myself to a place where I can be open about what’s going on. All thing’s said and done, yesterday was a really productive, good day for me.

I was supposed to go back to my alma mater for the yearly important event for my social group (a fraternity that only exists at one college, basically). I decided I didn’t have it in me to spend six hours driving, three of which would have started around the same time I started writing today’s blog post. The worst part, aside from missing the event that was the reason I joined the group and continues to be my favorite part of the group, is that I suggested a group education activity for the active members of the group (the ones still in college who pay dues) that was supposed to happen today. It was supposed to be a talk about mental health focused on suicide prevention and how to support people who are struggling with their mental health. As someone with a lot of experience with both of those things and tons of personal experience with the latter, I was planning to be there as sort of “witness/personal experience” voice to help bridge the gap between the actives and the alumni who were sharing their professional experience working in the mental health industry. I’m sure they managed it quite well on their own, I have the utmost faith in the people who volunteered, but I was looking forward to a more literal approach to what I try to do here on this blog.

I’m not famous in the group or anything, but people who are active still feel the effects of some of the stuff I did while I was active (namely, I created a new position in the group and gave it such a rich fake lore that everyone just assumes it has been around for forever). It would have had a humanizing effect on a lot of the stuff the professionals talked about. I probably could have also shared some coping strategies because I’m great at those. Mostly, I would have answered questions and talked about what to do when nothing is working and you don’t know what to do next. I have a lot of experience with those moments, both in my personal life and as a member of the group that people went to when they were struggling.

Instead of doing all that, I took my own advice and spent a bunch of time and energy on my mental health. I did laundry, tidied up my room a bit, made myself a delicious meal, and played several hours of Pathfinder: Kingmaker. I also spent some time with my pet bird who is finally, after almost three years, starting to want to interact with me. I pushed my face up against her cage, my latest approach to trying to get her comfortable with physical closeness since she’s finally grasped the idea that nothing can get through the cage to her unless I open the door, and she came right over to me. She’s never done that before. It seemed like she actually wanted to be right next to me. She even went so far as to nibble my nose a bit and pull at my beard hair. It was adorable and the most time she’s spent in close physical proximity to me in the entire time I’ve had her. I wouldn’t be surprised if she spent more time voluntarily that close to me yesterday than she’d spent in all the months between when I got her and yesterday. It was a sweet, touching moment that reassured me that I still have a reason to keep trying to coax her out of the terror PetSmart instilled in her of every person who walks by her cage.

Yesterday was a good, relaxing day. I need more of those. It was nice to be able to get to a point where I wasn’t writing because I felt I needed to keep an obligation to myself. I actually chose it over the game I had running the background for an hour and a half. My poor computer, forced to split its attention between the game and greedy Chrome. I could hear its poor fans working to keep up with the processor demands of holding the game in stasis while I wrote in a web browser notorious for using extra processing power with a program that dynamically saves in such a way that it makes the browser’s load even heavier on the computer. I’m just glad everything ran smoothly.

I hope today is a good day for you! I hope you find the love of writing that lead you to this challenge and that you’re able to continue working with a renewed love for the craft as we work our way through the middle third of this month. We’ve got eighteen days left still, plenty of time to catch up if you’ve fallen behind. Just take your time, keep working every day, and you’ll get there. Good luck!

 

Daily Prompt

Everyone has pet peeves. My roommate’s pet peeve is people who make noise when they eat. One of my coworker’s pet peeves is when people ask for his help on something and then they let him do it all himself instead of assisting. My pet peeve is people piling dirty dishes on the side of the sink where we put the clean dishes. Does your protagonist have any pet peeves? If so, how tolerant are they when it comes to other people when they play into the protagonist’s pet peeve? Do they blow up or do they brush it off? Or do they just complain about it to a third-party and never address it with the person annoying them? Write a scene showing us how they’re respond to a pet peeve.

 

Sharing Inspiration

One of my favorite video games of all time is Majora’s Mask. I’ve written an entire blog post about it, which isn’t saying much, and I’ve considered using it as the basis for a master’s degree creative writing focused on storytelling in visual mediums like TV shows and video games. The complexity of the story is inspiring, especially considering they had one year to make and release the game and used mostly visual assets from the prior N64 Legend of Zelda game, Ocarina of Time. Time travel, the chance to reflect on and fix past mistakes, the opportunity for growth, and the final lesson that you ultimately need to move forward if you want anything to really change. It’s also one of the best stories about mental illness I’ve ever seen, let alone seen in a video game, so there’s that, too.

 

Helpful Tips

Everyone talks about finding the right music, or the drink snack, or the right drink, but few people talk about the right keyboard. The steady pound of keys is just as much a part of the soundscape of your writing environment as the music you pick to play. Something like a squeaky spacebar can entirely ruin what is otherwise a pleasant experience. The “chakt” of a mechanical gaming keyboard can really start to grind after a while. I don’t know how some people do it. Even my roommate uses a different computer to do most of his writing for his classes. He uses a laptop instead of his comfortable chair, custom keyboard, and top-notch headphones. Membrane keyboards may not be as cool or as fun as mechanical keyboards, but they make for a much better typing experience in my opinion. Everything from the sound to the feel of repeatedly pounding keys is superior. Plus, I’m less worried about breaking it. That’s my own paranoia, but it’s part of why I take special care to only buy keyboards I can use in a store first or that I’ve previously owned. I’m on my second iteration of my current keyboard. The squeaky spacebar drove me nuts for six months before I broke down and bought a new one.

NaNoWriMo 2018 Day 11 (11/11)

Chris Leave a comment

Well, yesterday was a bit more productive than the last few days have been. I was super wiped by the time midnight rolled around so I didn’t stay up much, but I still got plenty done. I’m only scratching the surface of making up for the days I’ve barely written anything, but I’ll take any progress I can get right now. I need to get the ball rolling again and last night went a long ways towards that. Hopefully, but the time this posts, I’ll have gotten some more writing done, but who knows. I am dozing off as I write this, so it’s entirely possible that I wound up sleeping in super late to make sure I get a full eight hours of sleep. I need it pretty badly at this point, thanks to spending the day helping my friend move and my neighbor playing really loud music again until well past midnight.

I did most of my writing in my National Novel Writing Month project, “What You Know You Need,” instead of in the romance novel. I need a good deal more clarity to figure out how I want to restart that but being half-asleep makes it a littler easier to keep the worlds rolling on a project that’s better established, like “WYKYN.” As long as I don’t actually fall asleep, being half-asleep means getting more words written because the aware parts of my brain shut down a bit. My fingers know my keyboard well enough that I can maintain my typing pace easily enough, even with my eyes closed and my mind approaching dreamland. I can’t always understand exactly what I meant when I review whatever it was that I wrote, but it usually sounds pretty interesting. Take, for instance, the original end of this paragraph that I wrote while falling asleep last night. “but I can be surprisingly coherent most of the time, when it comes to killing stuff and staying alive.”

Classic sleepy Chris writing. If I was writing anything other than a blog post for tomorrow, that would be great. I’m pretty sure I was thinking about the video game I spent most of yesterday’s free time playing. That’s all I’ve played lately when it comes to killing stuff and staying alive, so that would make sense. Well, as much sense as any of this makes.

When it comes down to it, all I’m really trying to do every day is get more words written. I try to avoid staying up so late that I start to feel loopy and in danger of falling asleep at my desk, but sometimes I’ve just got a lot of momentum going and I want to get just a few more words in. I was making such good progress on “What You Know You Need” and I’ve finally gotten through a difficult scene so I just kept writing until I’d eventually done two thousand five hundred words for the night. That’s a good number to end on for a day of getting back into the swing of things, you know. I’d also dozed off in my chair three times, but I still got my words written and they seem to make sense so far. I then wrote this post and dozed off another handful of times, but I still got it done in what I hope is a sensible pattern.

Anyway, I hope day eleven of National Novel Writing Month is going well for you. I hope you’re getting enough sleep and taking care of yourself. I hope you’re making progress on your goals, at least, if you wound up deciding to forego sleep for more writing like I did tonight. Whatever you’re doing, good luck!

 

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Daily Prompt

The idea that you need to appeal to the five senses is just as much bullshit as every other writing rule (they’re more suggestions that rules since none of them apply absolutely), plus a little bit all its own. There are way more than five senses and you can really add to the reader’s suspension of disbelief (the way readers voluntarily choose to believe the story you’re creating) if you appeal to them. Sense of balance is a good one. The sense of where your hands are when your eyes are closed that lets you touch your nose on the first try. Sense of temperature, sense of the passage of time, sense of thirst or hunger, even! Throw in as many senses as you can! But not all at the same time, or else you’re going to be slowing down the story a lot.

 

Sharing Inspiration

As someone who tends toward negativity in my internal narrative, I often turn toward upbeat music to help shake me out of it or get me working on stuff when I don’t feel like doing anything. My favorite musician for that is Kyle Andrews. His music is reliably upbeat and even the slower stuff still has a cheerful vibe to it. Even when you start listening to the lyrics and realizing the cheerful Christmas song is about breaking up with your girlfriend and burning everything she ever gave you to fight off the chill you feel as a result of her treatment of you. It’s great! They’re clever and actually thoughtful songs, on top of all that. They very much adopt the attitude of “this is bad, but that isn’t the end of the world” and I need that sometimes. There’s even a song literally about that. Check him out if you need that. Or just want some good electronic pop/rock.

 

Helpful Tips

There are a lot of things that get in the way of writing every day. Some of them are the unfortunate requirements of life. Things like your day job, paying bills, doctor’s appointments, and grocery shopping all need to happen no matter how much writing you have to do still. Identifying these things and building time into your schedule for them can go a long way to mitigating how interruptive they can be. The biggest problem involved is actually figuring out all of the things that interrupt you or take time away from writing. The best way to find these things is to journal your days. If you keep a careful record of what you do and how it impacts your schedule over the course of a few weeks, a pattern will eventually emerge that could give you some interesting insight into how your mind or days work. For instance, my neighbor playing loud music late at night has the most impact on my schedule since it essentially renders me useless for the entire day after he does it. On the other hand, trying to play Pokemon Go actually makes me more productive because it’s something distracting that gets me out of the house for some exercise every day. Thanks to three months of journaling, which has used up half a notebook, I’m finding a lot of interesting patterns in my life. I hope you find some as well if you take the time to journal.

NaNoWriMo 2018 Day 10 (11/10)

Chris Leave a comment

Expectations are heavy things. One or two are alright, if you’re up for them. Once you start to collect a lot of them, though, the weight can crush you. The thing is, not all of them are yours. Sure, your expectations can be problematic when you’re looking for something you probably won’t get, but other people’s are usually heavier in my experience. I can simply put my own down. If I drop someone else’s, I feel like I’m letting them down or disappointing them. They can come in the form of wonderful compliments, but that doesn’t change the fact that someone has their eyes on you. I love that I’ve inspired people, but I feel like now there’s pressure to continue inspiring people.

That’s sort of why I do this blog, though, if I’m going to set aside the main goals of “public accountability when it comes to my writing goals” and “having a place to put the stuff I write.” The reason I write the things I do and unabashedly post about my mental health and personal life is that I want to create a place where other people who are struggling can find some comfort, rest, or understanding. I know my audience isn’t huge, but I’ve got my own little corner of the internet and I’m doing my best to shout so anyone who wanders by can hear something that is supportive and hopefully helpful. If I’m inspiring people to write, that’s great! I’m so happy to be able to have a positive effect on the world (and that’s my real life goal right there). If people think of me when they hear about someone who works really hard, then I guess that’s pretty apt because I work my ass off most of the time. They might feel like expectations sometimes, but that’s my own problem to deal with. I’m the person who is taking them that way.

When I want to give up on writing, when nothing else is helping and the little voice in my head that constantly fills my thoughts with “nothing you do will ever be enough” and “there’s no point in trying because you and everything you do is worthless” is winning, I take the time to sit down and write out a list of reasons why I write. There are a lot of consistent things on the list that hearken back to my reasons for beings. Things like “to help make the world a better place” and “to give other people what my favorite books gave to me: a place escape and hide away from a world that sometimes felt like it was out to get me” are usually first. Then there are things like “because storytelling fulfills me in ways that nothing else ever has” and “I need something meaningful in my life and telling stories is more full of meaning that anything else I’ve ever considered” that come and go as the way I view my life shifts. The last things are the ones that change from one year to the next, or even one month to the next, like “because I’m going for two years of consecutive days without missing a blog post” or “I want to wrap up this project by a certain time.”

The list helps because it’s all about me and why I write. It has nothing to do with whoever reads my stuff, with people involved in my life, or what might be going on the world. It is focused entirely on the intrinsic value of writing and that little voice in my head has nothing to say about whether or not those things are true or worthwhile. Plus, it tends to lead to some really productive introspection that helps me center myself. Between yesterday and today, I think  I’ve gotten my feet underneath myself again. Hopefully this next week of November will be more productive that the last.

I’m still not ready to talk about what’s going on in my life, but now it’s because I kind of want to focus on writing for a bit. There’s a time and a place for everything and sad stories that are going to require me to spend some time on emotional recovery should not be a part of trying to right the writing ship of this particular National Novel Writing Month. I’ve done almost not work on this weekend’s goals, so I’m going to forego sob stories and instead focus on trying to get a daily allotment of words written. Which is my new goal. Get words done every day. I need to dial it back while I’m getting back up to speed again. Otherwise, I’m just going to burn myself out getting nowhere. I’ll hopefully be able to write about my real progress for Monday’s blog post, but we’ll see.

I hope your weekend is off to a good start and that you’ve managed to continue making progress on your National Novel Writing Month project! I also hope your weekend continues to be good or improves and that you can make the time and energy to get some writing done. Good luck!

 

Daily Prompt

Action sequences can be really fun! Maybe there’s a fight brewing and your protagonist finally gets to show off their moves or maybe they drop a jar and, through a lucky combination of juggles, grabs, and kicks manages to keep it from hitting the floor. Whatever the reason there’s action, show it to us today! Write about the way the characters involved move through space, the way people respond to their movement, and make sure we know where everyone is so we can make sure that the person walking down the stairs who manages to securely catch the jar at the end actually had a clear line of effect from the person who gave it a last desperate kick to hopefully land it on the couch in the other room.

 

Sharing Inspiration

One of the most complex (in a good way), detailed stories I’ve ever read and enjoyed (sorry, Silmarillion) is Erfworld. It has been going on for ages and the amount of foreshadowing in every chapter is staggering. The attention to detail, the way every single thing in a page is important, and the fact that you’re usually right if you see something and wonder “is this important?” is mind-boggling. And the best part is that most of the twists are STILL unexpected. Or, if they’re expected, they’re still deeply satisfying. The characters are amazing and I’ve never been more hooked on a story and the characters taking part in it for as long as I can remember.

 

Helpful Tips

Like I mentioned above, creating a list of the reasons I write is super helpful for me when I’m having a difficult time staying focused over a long period of time or when I’m feeling particularly down. You should spend some time to do the same. It can be incredibly helpful as a mental exercise because it will hopefully help you figure out why you’ve decided to participate in National Novel Writing Month. Once you have the answer to that question, pushing through some of the bigger slumps or more difficult days will be easier because your reasons will be clear. If your reasons for writing are “to become inundated in attractive people I am sexually interested in” or “so I can make tons of money and build a bed out of hundred dollar bill” like some kind of nest-based Scrooge McDuck, then you should probably reexamine your choice since neither of those things happen to most writers. I suspect Neil Gaiman could do the former and that J.K. Rowling could do the latter, but both of them write because they love stories. The desire for money or a cadre of beautiful people isn’t really a motive that’ll help you push through a difficult day.

That being said, I’m not gonna judge you if those are your motivations since they might actually help you write. I’d just recommend setting some more reasonable expectations for the results of this month of writing.

NaNoWriMo 2018 Day 9 (11/09)

Chris Leave a comment

I bit off more than I could chew yesterday. I got home and tried to focus and write for four hours and got nowhere. I wish I’d just called it after the first hour because I’d have at least done something relaxing with my time. But I just wanted to get it all done like I’d planned. Which is the downside to goals, I guess. Especially big ones like the ones I was throwing around yesterday. It’s important to know the difference between “possible” and “likely.” I leaned too hard on the possible part and paid no attention to how unlikely it was that I’d have the energy and focus to do that much writing after a full day of work and stuff. I probably need more sleep, a bit of actual relaxation, and then I’ll be good to write.

I think the goals are good, I’m just still recovering. So I’m going to dial them back a bit and aim for that. The blog post counts are pretty much going to stay the same since nothing is going to stop me from updating my blog every day, but I probably won’t pre-write all the Tips for the rest of the month. It’s a bit of a pain to try to come up with them at the end of a night of writing, but it’ll still be easier to do that once a day over this weekend than to try to jam out nineteen extra at some point in the next few days.  I’ll aim for reaching fifteen thousand words in my National Novel Writing Month project, which is pretty much what I should be writing every day according to the NaNoWriMo thing, and I’ll drop my word count for the romance novel down to six thousand. Sure, I’ll have most of tomorrow afternoon and evening to write since I’m up a few hours at work, but I’ll be busy most of Saturday so I’ve really only got two days to spend on writing. Saturday, like yesterday, will be just about getting as many words done as possible before or after helping my friend move to her new house and then doing the requisite amount of hanging out before I bounce. As much as I’d love to spend some time with my friends, I would also like to get some writing done and rest up for next week. Next week is when I’m going to try to get back to it, hardcore mode.

I say “hardcore” mode like I’m going to step up my game to some new insane level, but that’s kind of the theme of the entire month. I’ve had three good days out of the last eight and I wrote twenty-three thousand words in that time. If I kept up that pace every day and wrote just my NaNoWriMo project, I’d have the whole thing done in a week.

Maybe that’s what I should do. Set aside the romance novel and just do the next forty-two thousand words of my novel over the next seven days (leaving a little room for blog writing), and then swap to my romance novel to do the same. That could work. Except for the fact that I know it won’t since seven-thousand words a day is an unsustainable pace during a work week and I still also want to do my Coldheart and Iron weekly posts, so that’s an extra two or three thousand words. Plus, as I said above, there’s a big difference between “possible” and “likely.”

So let’s just stick to my tame goals and then, when I’m rested, I’ll figure out how to fix up my plans so I can still accomplish all my goals for the month. I know I can still do it. I’ve been off to worse starts than this, percentage-wise. I doubt I’ve ever been this far off on word-counts, though. I should be at about thirty-two thousand words for the month as of the end of yesterday, but I’m only at twenty-seven thousand five hundred. Which isn’t a bad place to be, it’s just behind on all my metrics because I’ve only been consistent about blog posts and I can’t ride that minimum daily count for any longer before it starts to put me way behind. I mean, I’m only five thousand words behind schedule and that’s about five hours of work if I can focus. So who knows, maybe I’ll catch up. I feel pretty far behind, though, so I’m not sure the “projected total” and “actual total” are actually giving me the information a quick analysis says they do.

Okay, I crunched the numbers and everything’s further off. I should be at eight thousand words for my romance novel (at a minimum) and I’m only at two thousand and all those are getting tossed out because I need to fix how I’m writing it. I’m at eight thousand five hundred words in my National Novel Writing Month project and I should be at thirteenth and a third thousand words. So I’m essentially thirteen thousand words behind my word count totals. Which is about what I’d make up if I’d actually gone with the goals I stated yesterday.

I think that I’m going to keep my more reasonable goals for this weekend and just see where I am when I get there. Maybe I can push for some extra words every day to make up for being behind. An extra thousand every day would catch me up in no time. Four thousand words a day plus blog posts. Doesn’t seem like much when I say it like that, looking at my daily totals from past days, but it’s going to be difficult.

I’m going to take my advice from a few days ago and just focus on non-numeric goals. No time, no word count, just moving down the page and marking off story beats. It’s good advice. I should listen to myself more often. Anyway, I hope your day goes well, that you make good progress today, and that you can find the time to step away long enough to breathe and prepare yourself for the next dive. Good luck!

 

Daily Prompt

Unless you’re trying to write period literature based on stories from over one thousand years ago (if you are, I wish you the best of luck and I hope you let me know because I live stories from back then), your characters are probably going to grow and change. Maybe the entire story is about your protagonist growing and changing. Whatever part of the story it is, growth is important to show. For today, write a scene showing your protagonist growing. You could show them reflecting on a time when they would have made a difference choice or you could even show them growing by having them change the way they’re responding to whatever situation is causing their growth. It can be as little or as big as you want, but show it to us, don’t just tell us about it.

 

Sharing Inspiration

Sometimes, you just need to have an uncomplicated fun time. Most people don’t really think of Twitter when they think of places they can go for a fun time, especially considering how many nazis infest the platform these days. But me? I go check out #BadBookIdeas. Two of my Twitter friends are responsible for the resurging popularity of the hashtag and they occasionally have duels that always result in a spike of people Tweeting. It’s a great place to go for ideas. You shouldn’t use the ideas other people are posting because that’s kind of rude, but they have pun titles usually and they do a great job of getting you thinking about quick little stories. Participating is also great practice for coming up with stories ideas for your own use, so check it out and try it out!

 

Helpful Tips

Take some time away from your screen, typewriter, or notebook. Walks are great, but sometimes you just need to center yourself. Your mind needs to be tidied up every so often, just like the place you live, and the best way to do that is some kind of non-specific writing or expression. Maybe have an open-ended philosophical discussion with your friends. Maybe draw something or make some non-word based art. Maybe write a poem. Maybe do a little writing in your journal. Maybe meditate. You’ve got a lot of options and I’m sure you know which will work best for you. Don’t continue to push yourself when the words won’t come. Take a break, tidy up, and get your mind in order. This doesn’t mean play video games, read, or watch TV. You need to take the time to intentionally order your mind. Get things out of it.  Put some of it away. All of that. It’s not always easy and it’s not always possible, but there’s usually benefit to it. I’m planning to do a bunch of it after I leave work today since I’ve been putting it off all week. I’m going to make a phone call, have a good cry about this week, and then clean up my mind. Maybe then I’ll actually be able to write what happened in my life.

Anyway, this is a bit beside the point. Take the time to reflect on what’s in your head because that’s where the stories come from. You need to clean it up and care for it if you want to keep producing. Sometimes that means not accomplishing the goals you set for yourself, but that’s okay. Your mind is your best tool and it’ll work better once you’ve put some work into caring for it.

NaNoWriMo 2018 Day 8 (11/08)

Chris Leave a comment

What a fucking morning. Jesus Christ. Wake up and find out that not just all of the terrible stuff I mentioned in yesterday’s post is gonna be in the news all day, but there was also another mass shooting and Ruth Bader Ginsberg is in the hospital? I mean, is the world going for a new record number in their recent “Bad News Combo?” I feel like we’re approaching a point where everything that can go wrong will go wrong. It’s horrifying and incredibly draining. I just wanted to have a month where I could put everything else aside and shoot for some crazy-pants writing goals instead of trying to set up a sustainable writing habit like I did last November. I was so excited for those goals and now there’s so much going on in my life and my government that I can’t just tune it all out. There are so many things competing for my time and attention–I want to give my full time and attention to–that I wind up feeling pulled apart and unable to focus on anything.

I played a lot of video games last night, but that would up being less relaxing that I’d hoped. The game I’ve been playing, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, is a lot of fun and the story is great (I’m planning to review it next month, once I’ve gotten further into it), but it is nigh-impossible to get through this game with my character being a sorcerer! Spell-casting is powerful at later levels in the tabletop version of Pathfinder, but it isn’t super weak at earlier levels. It is limited, sure, but I shouldn’t be struggling this much. The real problem is how difficult it is to recover spells. Camping supplies are heavy enough that I can barely carry any since I’ve got a couple of low-strength characters in my group and they’re required for resting unless I want to let a bunch of hours fly past while someone in my party tries to hunt for food. Which doesn’t make any since because there’s also a “meal prep” section of the camping interface and you can make actual recipes if you have the raw ingredients in your inventory so I don’t know what is even going on here. Maybe they’re hunting for firewood? But there’s no fucking way that takes six hours. Honestly, I think the whole system needs to be reworked if they want to make casters a viable option. Otherwise you’re restricted to only buff casting and that gets super boring. Honestly, I might just restart my game and make a ranger or dexterity based fighter. Martial classes benefit the most from this system because very few of them have powers that get used up and health potions and such are cheap enough to buy in bulk. I mean, I have about three dozen at any given time since my cleric’s healing sucks constantly (his “rolls” for hitpoint restoration are so bad that he could use Cure Moderate Wounds and heal less than the bard casting Cure Light Wounds and has literally every time he’s done it) and the fucker keeps getting knocked unconscious because SOMEHOW, despite having a barbarian with double the movement speed who stands RIGHT NEXT TO HIM, he is ALWAYS the first person to reach melee combat so all the enemies latch onto him. I mean, fuck.

Anyway, this is what happens when you try to play a tabletop game like you play a video game. I would have loved this game if it was a turn-based game where everything moves in order like you do in the tabletop version of Pathfinder. I don’t care about grids or any of that stuff, but just being able to more easily line people up since I wouldn’t need to manage everyone at once would be nice.

I’m going back to writing tonight, once I leave work. I want to start catching up on the writing I haven’t been doing and, if I can get through today without anything horrible happening, I might be able to get some done. At the VERY LEAST, I’d like to avoid falling further behind in my goals. Sure, I’ve written a total of twenty-five thousand words this month, but I should be higher by now. That’s only twenty to twenty-five percent of what I want to do this month and I’m already past that point in the month. I know I can still recover from this. I’ve done almost thirty thousand words in a single weekend, friday night to Sunday night, before and I can do it again if that’s what it’s going to take. I just need to get my feet under me after this past week so I can start working again. If I can have a single calm day, just one, I can find a way to catch up this weekend.

Ultimately, I can’t count on that. I’d like it, but there’s too much going on right now to expect a calm day. I mean, I’m probably going to a protest at five this afternoon as a part of the public’s response to the recent shit Trump is trying to pull, and protests are generally not a part of a calm day. So I’m going to set myself some goals for the next four days, I’m going to mentally gather my power, and I’m going to do everything. I had my day of exhaustion and moping, so now it is time to work.

These are my goals to be hit by the time I go to bed on Sunday. I’m going to get my National Novel Writing Month project up to twenty thousand words. I can do fifteen hundred to two thousand words in an hour if I focus a bit and swap between projects to give myself a break. If I do that twice a day between now and Sunday, I can reach that goal without a problem. I’m going to re-write my romance novel with the tone I should have been using since the beginning and I’m going to get that up to twelve thousand words, which will also be about two hours of focused work a day between now and then. I’m going to continue updating my blog every day because nothing has made me miss a day in three hundred seventy-eight days and this isn’t going to stop me either. I’m also going to pre-write all of the “tips” for my blog posts so I don’t have to spend time figuring them out every day. Since they’re only one hundred fifty or two hundred words each, they’d make great breaks from working on my two book projects. Which means I’m going to find a way to write thirty-one thousand words in the next four days (or only thirty thousand if you exclude today’s post). That’s more than I’ve done so far this month, thanks to spending half my days trying to recover from everything going on. And it’s totally possible since I ALREADY did twenty-three thousand words in just the four days I actually worked this month.

I’m going to do this and I’ll keep you all updated on my progress as I go. I hope you can find your centers today and use it to push yourself forward as you work on your goals today, whatever they are. Good luck!

 

Daily Prompt

How do your protagonist’s friends view them? How does the world of your story view your protagonist? Your protagonist may have a very solid identity and you may know exactly who they are, but the world often sees people differently than they see themselves. The same is true of friends. Today, focus on the difference between the way your protagonist sees themself and the way their friends see them, along with the conflicts that can cause when a friend makes an assumption about the way the protagonist would react that clashes with the way the protagonist views themselves. These moments can be incredibly moments for growth, so don’t hold back!

 

Sharing Inspiration

My favorite video game, Breath of the Wild also tells one of my favorite stories using a wonderful and different method than most. Instead of telling most of the story through a strict narrative unlocked through steady progression through the game (like almost every video game I’ve ever played), Breath of the Wild hits the major plot points using a mission progression, but actually tells most of the story passively, as you wander through the game and learn the names of the various places on your map. Destroyed villages and overgrown ruins paint a picture of destruction generations old that most of the world is still unable to properly recover from. The people wandering through the world have kept their spirits up, but they’re constantly being attacked by monsters and, for most of them, their only recourse is to run away from the beings that destroyed their world one hundred years ago.

 

Helpful Tips

The act of setting goals, as evidenced above, can help you move from spinning your wheels to making progress. It’s the same idea as putting some research or part of an outline in the blank page of a new project. Once you have something, anything, to focus on, it makes it a lot easier to get started. Blank pages are terrifying, even after several years of writing I still hate coming face-to-face with them, and trying to make progress on a giant project without small steps to work on is the mental equivalent of a blank page. Break it down into steps, give yourself a time to get each of them done, and adjust your schedule and goals as time goes on and your progress requires. They’re supposed to help you motivate yourself, to change the giant task of “write a novel” into simple things like “write a full page” or “finish the chapter” that can be accomplished in a couple of hours of work. You want measurable progress and a list of goals is the best thing I’ve ever found for that.

Bonus-tip: If you need help getting fired up today like I have, listen to the first half of the Hamilton soundtrack while you’re working out your goals. Specifically, only the first half. Trust me on that.

NaNoWriMo 2018 Day 7 (11/07)

Chris Leave a comment

As you can see from the lateness of today’s post, I’ve encountered a hiccup. As a result of work, the things going on in my life, and my writing, I have over-extended myself. I spent yesterday evening trying to enjoy playing video games instead of writing in an effort to relax, but any recovery was offset by the stress and anxiety that resulted from yesterday being election day. I would normally be able to ignore that, but already being mentally and emotionally exhausted meant I was unable to do more than take it out of the forefront of my mind by playing video games. Because of how active my mind was, I was unable to sleep until the results were in and the anxieties about the day had been resolved. So I was up until two in the morning and I woke up four hours later. And then went in to work were I had to manage the second half of a meeting that was the culmination of over a year of work on my part. The first part, a major contributing factor to how tired and exhausted I was last night, was yesterday. Thankfully, all that is done now. Election results are mostly in. Sure, there’s still a ton of bullshit tied to most election results because my state (among others) is gerrymandered to the point of being completely fucking undemocratic and there’s tons of instances of blatant corruption and voter suppression, but the elections are over now and trying to change things with voting isn’t an option for another two years.  Plus, apparently democracy doesn’t matter anymore, the rule of law means nothing to a huge number of voters in this country given their support of a political group that has unabashedly allowed the most corrupt federal government in living memory to do whatever the fuck it wants, and apparently we’re no longer even pretending that the shit-show we’re living through right now is any kind of “normal.”

So I’m trying again tonight. Emphasis on “try” seeing as it’s doing to be difficult to relax while I’m waiting for the country to fall apart. Still, you gotta keep trying to live, right? So I’m gonna post this and then play video games until I get tired enough to sleep (which, in this case, means staying up until 10pm so I actually sleep through the night as going to sleep now means waking up at 9pm and being unable to sleep until 3 or 4 unless I just dose myself with NyQuil). Progress and forward movement are important, so I’m going to get at least a few hundred words in today between this post and doing some work on my National Novel Writing Month project. Maybe aim for one thousand words total, if I can. Or just focus on finishing the thoughts behind this post and doing enough to make it worth updating my word count on the National Novel Writing Month website. Whatever I can do without pushing myself too hard.

I hope day seven of National Novel Writing Month is going well for you and that you’re making progress on your goals. Even if it feels so small as to be entirely pointless, it is still progress. Write only one word, if you can’t muster more than that, and be proud of the fact that you managed to accomplish something today.

 

Daily Prompt

Humans are often very emotional beings. A lot of us let a few emotions have a lot of say in our lives because we tend to respond habitually unless we are consciously trying to change our behavior or taking the time to sort through our emotions before reacting. I tend toward anxiety and worry. One of my roommates tends toward exasperation and concern. One of my friends tends toward intense interest and nonchalance. What are the emotional habits of your protagonist? Are they aware they have a tendency to respond in certain ways or would it come as a surprise to them if someone pointed it out?

 

Sharing Inspiration

If you want to have a good time and don’t mind a certain degree of meta humor, and a really long-running gag, you should check out One-Punch Man. The story itself isn’t anything particularly amazing, though it’s still pretty clever, but the main reason I read it is for the way it makes fun of superhero comics and shonen manga. The comic is full of crazy villains yelling out their backstories as they commit stupid, petty crimes and heroes who do the same thing while busting said villains. It features a man who never fights seriously and still wins every fight in pretty much one punch (actual number may vary, but it’s only ever one vaguely serious attack per fight). It is full of great little jokes, a decent amount of well-conceived parody, and it still manages to stress the importance of heroism in ways that don’t get old even as it makes fun of most heroes.

 

Helpful Tips

There are these things called “sprints.” They’re essentially the same thing for writing as they are for running: quick bursts of speed and focus in order to get as far as you can in a predetermined amount of time.  Most people do fifteen minute writing sprints, since anything longer tends to stray away from something people can expect themselves to easily stick to. Personally, I prefer five-minute sprints. That’s about the amount of time it takes for my brain to get so far ahead of my fingers that it actively starts to impede my ability to write words. After a five-minute sprint, I update word counts, do a little math for whatever form I’m building to calculate the over-complicated formulas I produced to track my writing progress this month, and then do another one. Five minutes of writing, one minute off. I repeat that until I need to use the restroom or I’ve done five sprints. After the fifth sprint, I take a five-minute break and then get back to it again.

Ideally, you’ll figure out what period of time works best for you. If you’ve already done sprints before or you have some knowledge of how to cater to your natural attention span, you should be good to go. Otherwise, just try different lengths of time until it clicks. It’ll be obvious when it does because you’ll notice your word count start to climb quickly. Just make sure your breaks don’t involve anything distracting or else your sprints with turn into strolls.

NaNoWriMo 2018 Day 6 (11/06)

Chris Leave a comment

Well, day five was pretty much typical of how I expected a standard National Novel Writing Month day to go, despite staying at work a couple extra hours to prepare for a meeting I’m supposed to run today (and am running as this blog post goes up. Yay technology!) I’ve gotten over three thousand words written before working on this blog post and it should put me over four thousand. After this goes up, if I still have some energy, I’m going to do a little romance novel work or write another two hundred and fifty works in “What You Know You Need” so I’ll only be about three hundred thirty-three words behind, which is about the average amount of “extra” words I write in a standard day.

That being said, I’m still super wiped out from not sleeping enough over the weekend and still pretty emotionally distraught about what’s going on in my life. I may have had a busy enough day to avoid thinking about anything too deeply, but it’s still there, just beneath the surface, waiting for the right moment to rise up and make me want to cry again. I usually manage to keep my face pretty much neutral, which is important at work. It’s hard to run a meeting about the process you’re trying to implement as a part of your software coup if you look like you’re about to cry.

My German coworkers are in town (which is why we’re doing all this stuff now instead of waiting a bit longer) and it’s frustrating to need to be putting on a social face when all I really want to do is keep my head down and work alone. Coincidentally, they were also in town the week after I broke up with my ex and I had to do the same thing then. If I were a more superstitious man, I’d find it entirely plausible that their visits to the US are harbingers of pain and sadness in my life. I’ll have to watch out for it in future just, you know, to make sure. Honestly, I’d kind of like a bit of quiet in my life, next year, so I’m hoping that this year was the only year were we have my German coworkers are harbingers of doom. I need to work with those guys. I can’t do that if my every interaction with them brings doom and loss upon my life. I’m got pretty good emotional fortitude, but even I don’t think I could manage that amount of tribulation.

Anyway, writing is going well. I’m making good progress despite my emotional state. I’ve passed the twenty thousand word mark and I’m rapidly approaching the twenty-five thousand word mark. I still suck at writing romance novels, but I think I’m figuring it out. I’ve already read two of them this month, so I’ll figure it out eventually, I’m sure. I even managed to wrap up a draft of a Coldheart and Iron post for tomorrow! I’m still waiting on review, but it should be up at some point! Two updates in ONE DAY! That’s a first. The only other thing of note going on is the ongoing war with my computer chair. It refuses to stay at its maximum height so I need to continuously adjust it and it also makes this incredibly creepy, animalistic squeak if I lean on the left arm just right. Which I do. Constantly. Because I forget it’s there. And then my heart-rate skyrockets and my lifespan decreases.

I’m rambling. I’m going to go sleepy-write some words for my other projects until I actually fall asleep at my computer. I hope day six goes well for you and I hope you’re making progress on your goals. Good luck!

 

Daily Prompt

Despite the fact that Humans are incredibly complex individuals, our first reactions to surprises or big news tend to fall into a bit of a pattern. I tend to give placebo responses immediately and then either give a genuine response after catching myself being non-specific or give a genuine response after taking the time to examine my feelings about it. One of my roommates tends to respond logically first, entirely devoid of emotion, which he adds later on as needed. My other roommate tends to respond emotionally first but then fills in reason and shows you the logic behind his responses upon request. How does your protagonist respond to something unexpected or portentous?

 

Sharing Inspiration

Sometimes, I really just want some good music to stick in the background with an upbeat tempo, a fun sound, and a great rhythm. On those days, I always turn to Matt and Kim. Their music, which I’m pretty sure is “electric pop,” focuses on a delightful mix of keyboard synth and drums for some great dance music to listen to in your own home. Their early albums have a great deal of similarity to their songs, but that words really well for when I want to shut down the busy parts of my mind so I can focus on my writing. Their more recent stuff has a greater variety to it and it’s really good for jamming along to and signing when I don’t need to focus as intensely.

 

Helpful Tips

If you’re struggling to come up with what to write and taking a fifteen minute break isn’t helping, I suggest going for a walk. The soothing back-and-forth motion of a steady walking pace coupled with the movement of both sides of your body stimulates both sides of your brain. While you’re walking, try to think about stuff other than the story you’re working on or the frustration you’re feeling at not being able to figure out what comes next. Focus on the trees or houses around you. Do you best to be present in the moment and watch the world spin its way through the universe by observing it all around you. You may not find the answer to how to continue your story, but it’s a lot like unclogging the drain in your mind. Once things start to flow again, eventually the right idea will show up. Stagnation is the enemy and the best counter to it is a simple walk around the neighborhood. Seems too good to be true, right? That is where you’d be wrong. There’s actual science behind this that supports the reasons why the therapy I use for my OCD and PTSD is effective. Stimulation of alternating sides of the brain is linked to processing thoughts and feelings and emotions that feel stuck in your head. Clear whatever’s stuck on your mind up and you should be good to write again.