Writing

Fire and Peace

Chris 3 Comments

Here sit I, wrapped and stoic
In somber silence insoluble,
Painting prosaic pictures
On a dirty page so voluble
That it has become volatile.

My keyboard cries “calamity!”
Rocketing its reedy racket
Through thin and thankless seconds
Captured in a minute packet
And covered in an hour jacket.

Such soothing salacious sounds
Bring back bitter unbegotten barbs
That jibber, jabber, and jibe
uselessly against my wards
and all my other mental guards.

Plentiful and powerful peace
Is found and ferociously fenced
In the nearest nebulous neighborhood
To be kept as protection against
The encroaching ruin that is sensed.

Words fly like fast-falling fire
On volatile pages that, exploding, shatter
Rancorous raucous reality
And I leave in glorious clatter
Everything that’s supposed to matter.

Here sit I, wrapped and stoic
In fire and peace together,
The nascent nagging of necessity
Is felt like the prick of a feather
As I finally release my tether
And float in fictional felicity
Where I will not care whether
This makes me idiotic or heroic.

Saturday Morning (Evening) Musing

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Today was a nice day. Tomorrow marks three months with my girlfriend. That’s not a whole lot, objectively speaking, but it’s longer than most of my relationships have lasted so it feels nice to reach and mark it. Since we’re both busy tomorrow, we met up for a bit today to just spend some time together and we wound up spending most of it grocery shopping. We both love to cook, so it was preparation for both of us to spend the afternoon cooking. She was cooking meals for a friend who just had a baby. I was cooking because I wanted stew, my bean dip, and cider.

I, of course, had to clean the entire kitchen before I could start. It was too dirty and covered in dishes to cook, so I had to make some space and clean my surfaces. At the same time, it feels very good to get something visibly clean and I find it mentally refreshing. Part of cooking is, for me, imposing order on disorder. Taking several disparate things, my own knowledge and culinary senses, and bringing it all together to make something better than all the parts on their own.

Right now, my dip is made, my stew is simmering (to thicken), and my cider is delicious. It feels good to sit back and lent the scent of all of my creations wash over me as I watch the Overwatch League matches I missed during the day. I’ve got friends coming over to help eat the food I’ve made, and a nice warm house to enjoy during this cold weather. I’ve got no chores that need doing, no errands that need running, and no pressing business to attend to other than my writing and stirring the stew.

I catch myself thinking of the future a lot, of when I’ve finished paying off my student loans and finally settled down to live comfortably as I try to make ends meet as a novelist. I think about how quiet and peaceful my life could be, how idyllic my life would become. On days like today, I feel like I catch a glimpse of this future. Like I’ve gotten to look through a window into the eventual life I’d like to live. The problem with that idea, though, is that it does a disservice to my life right now. Sure, I have student loans and a good job that I don’t hate, but are those really reasons that I can’t build the life I want today?

There’s a reason we use words or phrases like that when we talk about the future. There isn’t one part that just magically makes it all come together, just like there isn’t a “right time” to start. We have to work on the life we want one step at a time, one thing at a time. I think I’m going to try to focus on that idea a little more often and let myself enjoy days like today as a solid step toward the life I want to lead.

Saturday Morning Musing

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I really suck at resting. I took a few days off so that I can rest and recover from the holidays. I wanted to basically start the new year out strong and well-rested so I could start working hard on my goals. While Thursday was fairly restful, Friday was not and Saturday looks like it’ll be fun but not very restful either. One of my roommates and I cleaned our place on Friday and, once we were finished with that, I started on all of the things in my room I’d been neglecting to do since mid-December along with a few new things. Packaging up Amazon returns, getting the presents I had to mail together and boxed up, and figuring out what to do with all of the Christmas presents I’d been given.

Today, I mail the packages, spend the day hanging out with my friends, and then spend the evening introducing my friends to my girlfriend and possibly going to club. Jury’s out on that last bit, though, as not everyone wants to go to the club and I’m not just going to abandon people who don’t want to go out (since my place is the where we’re hanging out, it’d be kind of awkward to just leave them here alone, you know?). If not, then I will stay in and hold down the fort while people come and go. Staying in is certainly more restful than going out would be, but going out to a club with my girlfriend and some of my friends would probably be more fun. I’d enjoy myself either way, really. The only thing I miss out on is writing time, and I’m missing that either way. I’ve resigned myself to that for this weekend.

Hopefully tomorrow will be more restful and full of writing. We’ll see, though.

A Visit From Inspiration

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I’ve been struggling with the poor weather and a certain degree of exhaustion, both compounded by poor health. Instead of my descriptive piece, have a poem I wrote in college, about inspiration. It is a parody of the Christmas poem, “A Visit from Old Saint Nick.”

Twas the night before Writer’s Day and all through the dorm,
Critters were stirring: spiders, ants, and flies, keeping warm.
The laundry was thrown about the floor without a care
Because no one brought guests anywhere near there.

The students lay sleeping off booze in their beds
While visions of parties danced through their heads.
I lay in bed, my game of Pokémon in hand,
Chasing that elusive place known as dream land.

When in my imagination there arose such an idea,
The racket could have been heard in South Korea!
I flew to my desk and threw on the light,
In the process blinding myself, ruining my sight.

The light on my laptop, notebook, and all the clutter and debris,
Made my whole desk simply too bright to see.
So I turned off the light, saving my poor eyes,
And instead used my laptop’s light to improvise.

I entered my password with a clickety-clack,
Brushing away the remnants of my midnight snack.
As slowly as turtles, my desktop booted up,
Right then and there, I almost gave up.

“Monkey Nuggets! Stupid Crap! Worthless Lunk!
Load faster! Come on! Stupid piece of Junk!
Close Skype, close Adobe, Close AIM too!
I need a fresh install! I need to start over new!”

As raspy as gravel on glass, my computer started,
Making as much noise as a dear soul departed.
Up came my icons, my widgets, and background,
And I began Microsoft Word with nary a sound.

Without hesitation I made such a racket,
I began typing, using every key but the bracket!
I drew out my plans, turning them all around,
I took the last of my AMP and chugged it down.

I dressed my characters in armor, giving them swords
I made them fight, giving the winners awards.
Countries rose and fell, millennia passed,
I had never known myself to write so fast!

My mind, how it sped through stories untold:
The strength of the young! The wisdom of the old!
The daring of knights! The defense of the weak!
Those who never find, doomed always to seek!

The stump of a pencil I clutched in my hand,
As I beat out a rhythm while drawing the land.
Broad sweeps of mountain, small little rivers,
Imagination coursed through me, giving me shivers!

Writing like I had never done before,
I felt like I’d washed up on creativity’s shore.
But something was wrong, something seemed off,
“No night could last this long” I realized with a scoff.

I’d said not a word, but my voice boomed ‘round the room,
Sealing my fate, bringing about my terrible doom.
I awoke, feverish and panicked, in my bed,
I lay there and groaned, wishing I was dead.

My inspired writing was naught but a dream!
I wanted to stay in my bed, do nothing but scream,
But here I am, writing a poem for you,
Because that’s how inspiration works: what can you do?

Late-Night Writing

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When midnight approaches
And exhaustion encroaches
I make a silent wish:
Just one more late-night hour
To write and feel the power
I have when I create.

A mind full of thick fog
Permeates my daily slog
When I choose to stay up.
Better fog than the loss
I feel as I turn and toss
When I instead choose sleep.

Second shift and spare time
Is never enough to climb
The mountain before me.
I just want to explore
Writing in a time before
I’m bidding friends good night

So for now I contend
With foggy days that descend
From my late-night writing,
All while hoping someday
I will be able to say
I spend my days writing.

NaNoWriMo Day 30 (11/30)

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I finished last night. I wrote my last 1500 words and then celebrated. I also wound up taking today off of work because I was up so late celebrating last night and I decided to reward myself this morning with a nice day off. A day of video games, reading books I’ve been ignoring, and reflecting on my month. Honestly, I could use a whole week off, but that’s a rather unreasonable expectation when I’ve actually got a 9-5 job to support my writing. It’s hard to support your writing with a job you’re not doing.

I think my biggest lesson from this month is that I’m still capable of incredible writing feats, though I really need to work on the “every day” part. Despite all of the time I’ve spent away from writing over the last year, since I entered NaNoWriMo in 2016 and decided not to attempt completion a day later, I’m still capable of pushing myself to produce a large number of words when I need to. My ability to write isn’t diminished, only my discipline and self-control when it comes to writing. Those will still be problems for a while, though. The end-of-month panic writing is clear evidence that I still need to work on pacing myself properly. Sure, I updated my blog every day, but the goal is to be able to write some of my story every day AND update my blog every day.

Which is something I still plan to do. Update my blog every day. I’ll find something for tomorrow and then spend my weekend working out an update schedule (for topics) and writing up a week’s worth of posts. Once I’ve gotten a decent buffer built up and worked out the kinks in WordPress’s scheduling function, I should be able to be able to just write the post a week ahead of time and schedule it for the next week. That way, I can still post on holidays without actually having to work on Holidays. Or, if I get sick again, I don’t need to struggle to make cohesive sentences, I can just focus on getting better and let my buffer take the hits. All-in-all, it sounds like a very solid if somewhat ambitious plan. Which is a theme of my plans. I really hope I manage to follow through on this one. It’d be really cool.

As for regular story writing, I’ll probably aim for 1000 words a day. Less than NaNoWriMo, but I’ll be able to go over 1000 words any time I want to. That, plus daily blog updates, should put me in the 1500 to 2500 word range which seems like plenty. I plan to continue my NaNoWriMo story until I reach the end, which should be in less than 100,000 more words. I would definitely say I’m in the 33%-50% range, so maybe I’ll finish it some time this spring. That’d be nice. Then I can get back to work on other projects while this story sits for a bit.

I’ve got so many things I want to work on and only what amounts to a part-time job’s worth of time to use unless I completely give up every other aspect of my life in order to write more. As rewarding as writing is, I think the last week has made it pretty clear to me that I need balance rather than unfettered pursuit. I’m super tired and ready for a rest. Maybe not a complete rest, but definitely a slow down.

 

Daily Prompt

In every story, there is a moment after the main action has concluded where the characters wrap up all the loose ends and make the last points on behalf of the author. Today, for the last day of National Novel Writing Month, write a scene about your character wrapping up your story. Maybe they’re talking with their friends after defeating the Big Bad Evil Person. Maybe they’re having a moment to reflect on their growth and the growth of those around them after coming of age. Maybe they’re looking back on all of their mistakes and realizing that they were wrong the entire time. Whatever it is, write it so that you can have the same sense of closure as the month ends.

 

Sharing Inspiration

One of my favorite things that crops up in older storytelling is the narrator speaking with the audience or invoking a muse. Tolkien didn’t do it in most of his fiction, but he wrote about what he called The Tree of Stories. Milton invoked a muse he referred to as The Holy Spirit. Shakespeare, in some of his plays, had the narrator invoke a muse. My favorite muse invocation is from Shakespeare’s King Henry V. The play begins with

O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!

The narrator is calling upon a muse to help them tell the tale of King Henry the fifth, a tale of war that could not be properly captured on a stage alone. At the end of the play, the author follows up the invocation of a muse with an apology:

Thus far, with rough and all-unable pen,
Our bending author hath pursued the story,
In little room confining mighty men,
Mangling by starts the full course of their glory.

This is a sentiment I feel a lot of writers share and one that I don’t think was entirely an affectation by Shakespeare. King Henry the Fifth was incredibly popular in England when Shakespeare was alive, so he likely felt exactly as the epilogue of the play depicts–the same way almost any amateur writer feels–like we’re not good enough to tell the story properly. It feels nice to see that even someone as huge in the literary world as Shakespeare struggled with these same feelings of inadequacy.

 

Helpful Tips

Remember, as long as you did something this month, even if it wasn’t necessarily more than you otherwise would have, the important thing to note is that you tried. Try often, fail frequently, and try again. As long as you’re willing to keep trying, you’ve never really failed. There are many lessons in a project and almost all of them come from the failures you experience as your go about completing it. Failure isn’t bad. Its part of learning and growing. If you don’t fail, then you’re not really pushing yourself. As Jake the Dog once said, “Sucking at something is the first step towards being sort of good at something.”

NaNoWriMo Day 29 (11/29)

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I did it. I got home from work early yesterday, dug deep, and wrote 5,000 words. I’m officially over a day ahead of schedule. I’m 1500 words away from finishing. I would have stayed awake longer to just power through those last words, but I was practically dead from exhaustion. I’d been nodding off during a meeting at work and couldn’t shake the feeling of fuzzy-brained idiocy I get when I’m warm, not nearly caffeinated enough, and sleep-deprived. So I opted to go home early at the cost of working an extra hour or so every other day this week. The trade seems to have worked out for me because I’ll easily be able to finish writing tonight and I feel so much better than I did yesterday.

I was always sure I could finish (and I REALLY hope I’m not jinxing myself by assuming I’m going to finish at this point) but I know that I truly considered giving up more than once as I fell further and further behind during the first two and a half weeks of the month. If I hadn’t gotten sick, I probably wouldn’t have been so exhausted that I had to write almost half of my word count in four days. I’d have spaced it out better. If I’d had better discipline from the start, I wouldn’t have fallen so far behind that giving up seemed like the right option. I know for a fact that I only persevered because I knew I could do it and I am too stubborn to do anything but double-down in the face of this kind of adversity. If it is something that relies on my ability to work hard and keep going, I will always double-down.

As much as I’m often conflicted about the many different parts of myself and my internal life, I really appreciate this sort of stubborn inability to give up. I can safely say that it is either a result of learning to cope with my mental illnesses or has been instrumental in coping with them. Or both. Something as core to my self-identity and self-experience as my stubborn refusal to accept giving up as an option is hard to trace to its source. Maybe I was born with it, maybe I developed it, maybe its just a tiny voice inside me that constantly says “you’ve gotten through worse so you can get through this.”

Whatever the case, I can verify that the wakefulness and focus this sort of determined stubbornness provides is one of constant and exhausting tension. I can always feel it in my back and in my neck when I’m relying on it. I can feel it in the way my head rests uncomfortably on my pillows and in the way my headaches start at the base of my neck and work their way up when I get so tired I can hardly see properly. Losing that tension, born of a need to accomplish a goal, leaves me feeling all limp and unfocused. After I finally caught up, it took me almost an hour last night to get back to work and only by focusing on another goal, on getting my word count to the point of being ahead one day, was I able to become productive again.

Today, I will finish writing. Tomorrow I will look back and reflect on my journey through National Novel Writing Month. Friday, I will look to the future. I’m interest to see where this goes.

 

Daily Prompt

Even the best of friends will fight or have disagreements from time to time. No matter what we do, we will eventually lose out temper with someone we love and respect. It may not even be their fault. Maybe we lost our temper with them because they were the dozenth person to ask us a question we don’t want to answer or address. Maybe we’d had a very frustrating day and something they did that normally is just a cute annoyance was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Regardless of why, a lot of the burden of fixing what happened is on the person who lost their temper. Not because expressing their anger or frustration was wrong, but because they lost control or weren’t respectful. To be sure, that is not always the case, maybe us losing our temper was entirely justified, but we’ll still often feel incredible guilty about it. For today, write a scene in which your character loses their temper with someone they love. Show us whether or not they were justified and show us what they’re willing to do to fix things, even if they weren’t the one who was in the wrong.

 

Sharing Inspiration

Today’s inspiration is something I’ve technically shared before. On the second day of this month-long project, NaNoWriMo Day 2 (11/2), I shared a link to an hour-long compilation of Pokemon Route music. Today, I’d like to share a specific song from it because this song, to me, is what victory sounds like and I’m feeling pretty damn victorious today. This link is to a half-hour version of this song. This one is to a Jazz rendition of it. They’re both pretty good, depending on which sort of music you’re in the mood for. I was definitely feeling the jazz version last night as I sat in my room, writing, my room light only by the softened glow of my monitors and the four pillar candles I’ve placed around my room. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do and that it propels you on to finish your writing.

 

Helpful Tips

Music has a huge influence on my mood and on the tone of what I’m writing. I like to keep a variety of playlists around specifically for changing and influencing my mood as I write. I used to keep my playlists on iTunes, but I’ve changed computers and had my library deleted by iTunes too many times to rely on it any longer, so they’re all on YouTube. That way, I can access them pretty much anywhere on any device that has internet access.  I high suggest that you do something similar if you’re looking for a way to affect your mood while you write. Even just putting on something that makes you feel good about yourself or the world or other people can turn what started out as a burdensome day of writing into a more exciting and fulfilling day of fun.

NaNoWriMo Day 28 (11/28)

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I’m a little ahead of schedule so far. I had to write 2500 words last night in order to finish on time, but I wrote 3200. That isn’t very far ahead of schedule, but doing it twice more means I only need to write 400 words on Thursday to finish. Which means I’d be able to start my recovery period and early nights on Thursday instead of Friday. I’m all for that, so we’ll see how it goes. Maybe I can do even more writing tonight so that I can just take Thursday entirely off. Nothing wrong with Finishing early, you know?

I also noticed that the “schedule your post” functionality of WordPress isn’t very precise. I had yesterday’s post all set to go up at 9 am, since I was going to be at work, and it didn’t actually post until I’d pulled up my website and logged in (of course it posted immediately when I logged in). I’m thinking I might be able to schedule the post, but I’ll need to actually still check every day if only make sure WordPress is doing what I told it to. It feels rather silly to have a schedule function that doesn’t really work, though. Maybe I should write up a bug report and submit it to the WordPress team. I do it for Google and video games all the time now, since I’ve become a professional software tester and all.

I haven’t gotten any comments on my post asking for suggestions of what to do with my blog after this month has ended, but I’m think it’ll probably be something a little more focused on creativity since my last blog before this one had focused on that and did much better in terms of views and followers even after I’d stopped updating it. The exact schedule it yet to be determined, but I’m pretty sure my first days of recovery are going to be spent creating a buffer of scheduled posts for me to fall back on while the actual recovery is happening this coming weekend.

A year of daily posts seems like a tall-order, but I’d have said the same thing before I decided to update this blog daily, so I suspect it’ll be a bit more achievable than I think it is right now. I might need to get an editor, though, since I’m clearly not that great at editing all of my posts before they go up. I’ve re-read some of the earlier ones and been horrified by the things I’ve missed.

I actually spent some time tonight playing one of my current favorite video games, Overwatch. I tend to prefer playing Tanks and Supports since I prefer the more strategic style of playing the game and playing a good tank is all about timing, situational awareness, and knowing where the tipping points are. Feeling the pressure building means you can anticipate when to drop your defense and attack with your DPS, while feeling it fall means you can be ready to cover the retreat of your supports and DPS when you need to get to a more defensible position or risk being torn apart. Those are my particular skills. I’m not great at soloing or flanking, but I am one of the best tanks I’ve played with at seeing the tipping points and being ready to take advantage of them. My main problem is that most of the people I play with online don’t even know that these tipping points happen, much less how to actually group around a tank. Tonight, though, I got to play with my friends and I cleaned house. It was wonderful. I’ll look into uploading some of the videos in the future, since I feel like they’re classic examples of the tipping points I’m talking about.

Hey! Talking about video games like that would make an excellent weekly feature! This content practically writes itself.

 

Daily Prompt

For those of us who spend a lot of time working on projects or doing things we’re not particularly good at, failure becomes a familiar face. One of the most important aspects of learning to create or improve is to accept that failure is going to be much more common than success, no matter how long you’ve been doing it or how good you get. If you aren’t risking failure, then you likely don’t have much to gain from what you’re doing. For today’s prompt, write a scene in which your character comes face to face with repeated failure as they try to learn something new or create something.  Show how your character responds to this failure and what happens as a result of them recognizing it.

 

Sharing Inspiration

Sometimes, you stumble across something that can only be a labor of love. Someone, at some point, wanted something and then took an incredibly long stretch of time to create something that perfectly fulfilled it before putting it up on the internet for everyone to see. One of my favorite examples is this list of 1000 totally random magical effects. I found it when working with a D&D player on a character concept that revolved around them causing random magical effects whenever they were frightened. I found a way to simulate rolling a d1000 and then would take whatever magical effect I got on the table. Examples include her character and the source of her fright had to pay 20% of their character’s total worth in the form of taxes. Another one was that the nearest tree (or, in this case, the mast of their airship) turned into a fully decorate Christmas tree complete with presents for everyone around underneath it. She also grew wings once. That was fun. This sort of dedication to an idea is something that always inspires me to keep working on my own crazy ideas and stories because someday, someone I don’t expect at all will find them and appreciate them.

 

Helpful Tips

Like I wrote in the prompt, failure is something you’re going to encounter a lot if you take any risks and trying to create something without taking any risks is not really worth doing. One of the books I’ve been reading for work, as my boss tries to encourage a creative and adventurous atmosphere in our R&D department, suggests that failing early and failing often is the best way to approach any task. If you spend all of your time planning, you’re still going to come up with one or more failures later in the process but you’ll have less time to correct those failures than if you’d just dived right in and started failing immediately.

Writing and NaNoWriMo are hard. I’ve failed NaNoWriMo twice. The first time, I failed so hard I didn’t even sign up to participate. I tried to pretend I didn’t need the accountability and that I’d be able to succeed on my own because I wanted to be able to hide any failure. Last year, I failed because I wasn’t willing to put the energy I had into writing every day or writing enough on my weekends to make up for not writing every day. Sure, I had my reasons, but there will always be reasons to not do something. Better to try and fail rather than not try and fail anyway. You always get something out of it when you try, even if you still wind up having failed just as much as if you hadn’t done anything.

Even if you know you won’t finish in time, don’t give up. Keep trying. Make your failure the best failure you can because the lessons you take out of this, the writing you’ve done when it is over, that will all still be there whether you succeed or fail. Every attempt is a learning experience and the ones that teach us the most are almost always the failures.

NaNoWriMo Day 27 (11/27)

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As I enter into the last week of National Novel Writing Month, I’ve begun to reflect on what’s coming after this. I intend to keep up my writing every day. Probably at a slower pace of at least 1,000 words a day unless that feels too light after all of my cramming in the last couple weeks of November. I probably won’t go much higher than 2,000 though. More than that tends to put too much stress on me and I am really going to need to rest after this month. A lot. Beyond even the mental and emotional rest I’ve been denying myself. My wrists hurt and my elbows ache from being pressed into the awkwardly placed arms of my chair. My fingers are still and achy, caught between the warmth of constant movement and the cold air the rest of my prefers to have wafting over my monitors and into the rest of my room. My sleep schedule will need repair as I’ll finally be getting more than 5 hours of it at a time. I’ll have to do something about my caffeine dependency without going entirely cold turkey. I need to stay cognizant at work. Maybe do a few weeks or months of tea only.

There’s a lot to think about and to plan for. I’ve enjoyed the feeling of updating this blog every day, but having to come up with prompts, inspiration, and tips every day is make this a lot less fun than I’d like it to be. I’d like to get a buffer made, too. Write a week’s worth of posts ahead of time so I don’t need to worry about forgetting on night or what happens when I need to stay up late to finish my writing. Also, what do I post about for? Book reviews are good. I’d also like to get some of my creative writing up here, too. I want to start addressing issues I feel qualified to talk about. Also boost other projects I see that I think are cool, even if I don’t really have a huge audience yet. Maybe a weekly story update of some continuing adventure? There are just so many things I can post, but they all sound like way more work than the random hodge-podge I’ve posted here in the past.

I suppose that’s the price of setting goals, though, isn’t it? I might actually have to work. If I can get a structure hammered out and start actually creating content ahead of time rather than writing these updates at midnight or later of the day I’m going to post them, then I should be able to do this more easily than I think.

I know my readership isn’t very constant and I’ll admit I’ve got no idea how accurate the WordPress stats tracking is, but I would definitely love to hear from anyone who reads this blog. Tell me what you would like to see, what you’ve enjoyed me posting about, and I’ll look into my most-viewed posts to see if I can find a theme. Talking about my depression seems to get a lot of views most of the time, but so did talking about NaNoWriMo during the first week of this month, so who knows?

At the end of the day, I’m really doing this for myself, to prove that I can, and this wouldn’t be the first blog I eventually abandon because I wanted to change the way I present myself online. I’m a bit more fond of this one, though, so who knows? I mean, I actually paid money for this blog instead of just using the free option so I could have a URL without the .wordpress part. Maybe this’ll explode in a super rewarding way and I’ll get the sort of feedback and participation I want and keep updating this blog until the day I die? The future is far-off and inscrutable. I’m sure I’ll find out eventually, though.

 

Daily Prompt

We all make mistakes. One of the most famous “sayings” points this out to us. “To err is human.” Half the time we make mistakes, they wind up being better for us in the long run because we’ve learned a new lesson or found ourselves with an opportunity we never expected to have. There’s a certain mental philosophy out there that there’s no such thing as a true mistake aside from choosing not to make the best of whatever happens.  We spend a lot of time trying to convince ourselves that this is true, perhaps to keep us from wondering what might have happened if we hadn’t made the mistake. Maybe we appreciate what happened because of our mistake, but it can be hard to avoid wondering if things would have been better for us if we hadn’t messed up. The times we can actually find out are so few and far-between that the whole concept is a popular iteration of stories about wishes being granted, almost as popular as seeing how worse the world would be if we’d never been born (“It’s a Wonderful Life” style). Write a scene in which your character, through whatever means you life, gets a chance to find out how things would have been if they hadn’t messed up before. For those of you writing more real-world oriented fiction, maybe they’ve got a second chance at a date they missed or a new opportunity for interview for a job they didn’t get.

 

Sharing Inspiration

Today’s inspiration is Wikipedia, the source of literally every bit of useless information I need to write about any number of things. I once spent an entire night learning about ships, sailing, and boats, with a few forays into diverse topics that showed up in surprising places. Fried chicken–chicken cooked in hot oil–started in China and traveled to Italy as a result of sea-faring trade and eventually made its way to the southern half of the US where it became breaded chicken cooked in hot oil because there was just so much grain down there that people just threw it at everything just to see what would happen. This practice also resulted in what we call country fried steak. So much useless information for the inquisitive mind that can wind up being surprisingly useful when you least expect it. Most of what I learned about searching for good results I learned from trying to avoid Wikipedia pages on Google. There is just so much information on those pages that is either un-cited or refers to sources that aren’t necessarily trustworthy. I have no idea if fried chicken really came to the US because of the slave trade, but it sure gives you something to think about. If you posses a critical mind capable of reveling in new information without losing the right amount of skepticism to doubt everything on some level until it is proved beyond the shadow of a doubt, Wikipedia is one of the best places to go to just stir up your mind in a whirl of new thoughts.

 

Helpful Tips

Sometimes, it can be helpful to look at the world through fresh eyes. As we grow, we often lose the ability to see the magic and wonder in the more mundane parts of life. We’re all quite used to getting up in the morning by our alarm clocks, but have you ever really thought about how much work had to happen in order for your phone to be small enough to fit in your pocket, smart enough to be able to tell the time even when it’s not connected to the internet, complex enough to handle not just time-tracking but also the management of all the hardware parts that keep your phone going. All of that does without even thinking about the electricity that powers your phone or the way the screens can detect the touch of fingers.

If you have trouble with taking a step back to really look at things, the easiest way to regain that ability is just head to Wikipedia. Spend a lot of time learning about really mundane things like the origins of Fried Chicken and how older TVs worked, specifically the ones that predated flat-screen TVs. Learn about the process of how coffee goes from being a bean growing in the dirt to an integral part of your morning routine. Learn about the origin of energy drinks and how caffeine is added or removed from soda. Learn about why keyboards are laid out the way they are and why staring at a monitor for too long hurts your eyes. Another way to do it is to spend time why an inquisitive child who wants to learn about everything. Teach a child to ask “why” and you’ll wind up learning more than you believed possible, all while restoring some of the wondering and mystery to the world you thought you understood.

 

NaNoWriMo Day 26 (11/26)

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I managed to write my desired 7,000 words yesterday. It took until 2am, but I did it. I really hope I get more done this afternoon instead of needing to be up super late to finish. I’ve got work tomorrow morning and I’d like to get at least 6 hours of sleep before that. Even though I got 7 hours of sleep after finishing, I’m still super exhausted and worn out. This goes beyond my poor, murdered sleep schedule. I’ve hit a point where I’m putting out more creative energy and material than I’m taking in, thanks to the combination of my writing marathons and my illness, so I can feel myself being drained. I’m hoping that, after one more day of pushing, I’ll be able to settle back down for a quite 1,666 words a day for the last four days of the month and actually start reading and playing games I love again. The tank is nearly empty and I need to fill it back up again.

This sort of feeling has always been worrisome to me because I have a very similar one when I’m having a bad bout of depression. The only real difference is that this creative deflation feeling is centered in my chest and spine. It makes me feel like I’m propping up my head using sticks and strings tied to the ceiling. My depression feels a lot more like my entire self has been deflated and all I am is a rubbery suit of myself that can only flop around from one thing to the next. The reason it worries me so much, despite the clear distinction between the two feelings, is that my depressive episodes always start with a smaller deflation. The rubbery suit gets punctured somewhere and the air starts to leak out from there first, before all the old holes open up and I just quickly fall to the ground like an empty balloon.

The same is true of emotional exhaustion. That leaves me feeling empty and deflated in a different part of my chest and my head. The only kind that doesn’t is physical exhaustion because I’m usually too tired to feel anything at that point. If I do feel anything, it’s the burn of my muscles, an overwhelming desire to sleep, or the stretched and tight feeling of muscles that have been worked out regularly.  That’s one of the reasons I have a tendency to stay up late or choose to not sleep as much when I’m feeling a depressive episode coming on. If I’m physically exhausted, I’ve got no room to feel deflated and I’ll just crash when I go to bed instead of staring at my ceiling with little to think about other than how deflated I’m feeling.

One of my friends advised me to take care of myself when I told her how much I’ve been writing and how much social energy I had to spend yesterday. I, of course, commented that I had too much writing to do and that I’d have time to rest next weekend, once NaNoWriMo was over. I went on to say that, if I spent enough time writing, eventually that would become a form of self-care itself. Of course, I then joked that it was a lot like Stockholm Syndrome, which was met with an appropriate amount of skepticism. The more I think about it, though, the more I wonder if I was really joking or just trying to find a way to embrace an exhausting activity that routinely leaves me feeling drained in a way I associate with one of the most negative aspects of my life. It certainly is appealing. If I could find a way to feel good about the creative drain feeling, maybe I could find a way to make myself hate my depression less.

I haven’t really decided, yet. I’m a little too busy to spend my time thinking about it right now, so I think its going to get stuck with the rest of my self-care in the “on or after Friday” bucket. Only 13,700 more words to go.

 

Daily Prompt

Selflessness can be very important in a protagonist. It can be something for them to learn, a value them exemplify, or perhaps a flaw that they need to dial-back a bit. The place it most commonly enters into our lives is when we are confronted with a situation in which we stand to lose much by taking any kind of action at all. Perhaps it is a no-win situation and the only way to minimize the loss is by turning away from it entirely. At the same time, a lot of these situations are also more complex than just the result to those directly involved. What does your action or inaction mean for other people down the line? By acting now, and accepting the losses involved, could you maybe cause some good further down the line? Write a scene for your character where they need to evaluate a situation beyond its immediate outcome in order to find the best solution, regardless of whether it is good or bad for them, and then their process of deciding what to do with that situation.

 

Sharing Inspiration

Today’s inspiration is not the media that inspired today’s writing prompt, despite the fact that I want to share it everywhere and with everyone. It is one of a series of backer comics from a Kickstarter campaign and, while the artist made the first comic publicly available recently, it took three or more years from its original share date for that to happen. This comic was only sent out this year, so it’ll be a while before he posts it online. Instead, read the Dresden Files. Harry Dresden may not be the knight in shining armor and bastion of selflessness that I wanted to share, but he’s constantly putting his life on the line to help protect people around him, even when it’s not his fault that the city he loves is in danger. He’s a good example of it means to act toward the greater good even when its going to cost you personally. Most of the time, anyway.

 

Helpful Tips

As much as I personally struggle with striking a balance, it is important to remember that you can’t create endlessly. Every so often, you need to stop. You need to rest. You need to recover. You can often push yourself far enough that you’ve left what you thought were your limitations far behind, but there’s always a price and you’d better be mindful of what it might be. Eventually, you will need to stop whether you want to or not. If you struggle with feeling in control, it is almost always better that you choose to stop than be forced to stop. Take the time to care for yourself, and not just in a bubble-baths, tasty food, and new books kind of way. Self-care is more complicated than that. Self-care is making the best decisions for yourself when looking at your life beyond today and tomorrow. Sometimes, self-care means pushing yourself to work out every day. Sometimes self-care means pushing yourself to write every day until it becomes a habit. You need to figure out what your self-care needs are, though. I can’t tell you what you need most. All I can do is let you know that there’s an important line to be drawn between writing every day (my self-care) and writing so much every day that I’m left feeling exhausted (causing me to need more self-care). Don’t think of it as a treat to make yourself feel better, think of it as a balance you must find in your life between all the things you know you need to do and all the things you want to do. As long as you don’t neglect an imbalance for too long, you’ll be fine.