Distracti … Wait! What! Squirrels!!!

Technology. Oh, what a double edged sword you are.

One of its biggest gifts to me personally was the grammar/spell checker. It’s been a time saver for me. It helped me find my obvious mistakes faster, leaving more time for the tricky ones. I don’t have to tell anyone who can reed this blog that functionality never improved anyone’s grammar, spelling or writing discipline. Heck, I bet there are still a couple of mistakes in this paragraph alone.

The real slicer for me has been the endless distraction of the Internet. I can take a quick “break” from writing that turns into hours of surfing. More insidious, I’ll start honest-to-God research for my story, blink, and I’m playing a web browser zombie game. … where I’m the zombie.

“The hardest step is always the first,” is what skydivers say. 

First I had to admit that I had a problem at first. Like most addicts, I shifted blame to something else. Back then, I blamed work. Since I spent ninety percent of my work week on a computer every day, it must have been blocking my writing chi by the time I got home.

That never stopped me from gaming, writing long posts on forums and the like, but somehow it blocked up the “real” reason that I spent money on a computer in the first place.

I finally found a workaround. 

I wrote long hand. For a while it was fun. I would pick up a journal with a certain look and feel to get me in the mood for a story.  I still have the wonderful, rough moleskin that’s earmarked for my supernatural Western.  That was a good first step, that evolved in my learning that I could literally write anywhere if I put my passion and heart into a project. Eventually, any composition or notebook would work for me. I just need a place for the first draft to flow without red squiggly lines or a backspace key to tempt me.

The flip side to that was I had to type all this stuff into the computer. Booooooring! Sadly, though, longhand+typing was still faster than trying to type it alone. Rewriting seemed to be something that I can focus on a bit more.

But lately, I've been wanting to up my game in the speed department , so I aimed at getting me to back to writing solely from the keyboard.  

Sheer willpower didn't do the trick, unfortunately.

 I've been trying to use these “distraction free” writer programs. They fill your whole screen with your words, won’t let you shrink the window and some don’t even let you backspace. That last one is such a killer for me. 

I don’t mind have a whole handwritten page that’s crossed out like someone left it in a crib with a crayon and a baby coked out on sugar cereal. But if I have a whole worthless typed page, I've got to go find that later on a laptop with a screen that’s only going to show me a third of page at a time. (When is someone going to invent a cheap Legtop computer? Right side is preferred.)

Overall, though I have to admit, I am pleased with my first month of using the distraction free program. I squeezed out two extra pages and didn't have to commit anything to paper.

But today I discovered that I can still use ALT-TAB to shut the window.

 ... Damn. 

How do you get it done … like finished, fini, The End.

So while I cool my heels waiting to hear back from Kindle Singles, let's roll back the clock a ways to when I first started.

I got the writing bug when I was twelve. I had emptied the high school library of any book that I wanted to read. There were still plenty of spines lining the shelves, but not the stuff that dug under my skin and opened whole new worlds to me. I had to solve that issue ASAP. 

This farm boy's other hurdle was that I only got $4 a week for all the chores I did on the pig farm. Most of it was shoveling shit. So no cash, no books ... as if I had a book store to go to.

My solution – write my own stories. How hard could it be? (insert maniacal laughter here)

What nobody knew at the time was that I also had ADHD, long before it was a recognized learning disablity. My own grandfather's diagnosis for me was “lazy and featherbrained;” my teachers called me eccentric ... to my face.

Back then, I think I finished one short story and that was about it. For literally decades, I'd start a cool story concept and get stuck in the middle, lose interest and then find a bright, shiny new idea to play with. I was the writer's equivalent to a crow … or a raccoon.

Fast forward to now and I've got a folder of finished fiction projects.

Quick aside: This is a stark contrast to my old journalism /marketing career where I have reams and reams of articles, ads and press releases. … Deadlines and a paycheck every two weeks can be a wonderful motivator, I tell ya. In the old pulp days where magazines were demanding five or more stories a week, Harlan Ellison says that he thought of the first story of the week as his rent check, The next one was his meal ticket. A hell of way to keep yourself motivated.

The rest of us gotta dig deeper to get to the finish line. For me, it was a combination of things that got me to finally start putting “The End” on my fiction pieces.

My original motivation for any story was an awesome visual that I'd see in a daydream. CGI ain't got shit on my daydreams. People with extra spider limbs fighting inside five-star hotels or a cowboy walking down a muddy street with huge invisible dragon footprints surrounding him, those were my money shots.

I'd try to write to that scene, and if I had to make a convoluted plot to get there, even better. Problem was, I'd never get there.

Finally, I decided to make a commitment to finish a damn novel, no matter what. So I swore off starting off anything new. If I had to spice things up, I'd add that new shiny to my novel in progress. 

It might be a Frankenstein of a book when I was finished, but that wasn't as important as getting the damn thing done.

 I also made the plot as stupid simple as possible. An outline might have helped. (But every time I do one, I either end up with one sentence or a whole treatment.)

I plugged away at it for years. At times, it was a snail's pace. In part to having a day job, in part to writer's block. At this point, I really hadn't mastered finishing a project, but I did manage get some stick-to-it-iveness.

Then I joined a workshop and that gave me monthly deadlines. (Workshops will be another post sometime.)

For a while, I circled the same chapter for half a year as the workshop helped me fine tune it. Then the crew put their foot down, they refused to see the chapter again. Either submit the next chapter or do a different story. 

So the workshop not only gave me deadlines to shot for, it also taught me when to let something go in the short term for the sake of the whole piece. At some point, you have also do this for the whole novel. To paraphrase Leonardo da Vinci,  novels are never finished, only abandoned.

The odd thing is that there is no real difference to giving myself a deadline or deciding that I've circled the drain long enough on a chapter. But like AA, the strength of others and their expectations pushed me to get my shit together.

Sot to recap:

• Don't start anything new
• If something makes you passionate, add it to your novel
• Find a way to make deadlines motivate you.
• Stop mucking with it and move on.

Those are the things that helped put all this shit that's now on my hard drive. … At least it's not pig shit this time.

Short postscript/addendum/footnote/whatever:

Every writer is different, so their strengths and weakness all vary and vary in degrees. That means there's no magic bullet to solve your problems. If you were hoping for such a thing, you need to stop making yourself a target for wishful thinking.

This forces writing advice to be either generic in a “How to” format, or it's going to be specific to a writer.To reach a broad audience, most advice is written in the former.

IMy personal stories may not help everyone, but if it gives a leg up to at least one reader, then I'll consider it a “personal best” for me.

Well, Part 2 of the Kindle Singles project is going to have to wait.

I'm curious about the Amazon Kindle Singles project. I also decided to blog about the experience.

 I took the dive today to submit a short story of mine ... and the KS have about a 4-week turn around, so Part 2 is going to be a while.

In the meantime the Submission Guidelines, suggests sending as much material as you can for a manuscript. That confuses me. Will they look at partial projects? Do they want simultaneous submissions?

I'm sure down the line these questions will seem pretty dumb.  But, hey.

“You're afraid of making mistakes. Don't be. Mistakes can be profited by. Man, when I was young I shoved my ignorance in people's faces. They beat me with sticks. By the time I was forty my blunt instrument had been honed to a fine cutting point for me. If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn.” 
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Stephen King Equals Dr. Oz.

Last post, I talked about you, as a writer, facing your inner demons of self-worth. If that’s not fire pan to fire bad enough, you be getting it aplenty from the outside world too. There will be forces both social, economic and industrial that will constantly test your resolve and tempt you to quit.

  

Where to start? Let’s start with strangers and work our way in.

SK=OZ, M.D.

For writers, it’s feast or famine in so many ways. The best example is the guy who has never heard of you. His unspoken assumption is that if you aren't on the best sellers list or a cultural icon, then you've got to be a starving artists.

Admit it, you've done the same if you've met a writer, or other artist, you didn’t know.  People imagine us in either a hovel or a mansion. Never a ranch style with a two car garage.

Do me a favor  …  the next time someone gives you that look when you say you’re a writer. Ask what they do.

If they tell you they’re a doctor just look them in the eye and say, “Oh. You mean like Dr. Oz. That’s cool, but I've never heard of you.  That must mean you have a day job, right?. Say when I retire from writing, I want to be a doctor because I’m good with people.

"I’m working on a medical thriller. So by the time I’m done researching the book, I figure that I’ve got all the ground work I need to be a doctor.  That should take me a couple of years. How come you guys don’t do that way? It’d be much easier.” This works with lawyers too by substituting “Supreme Justice” and “Law” where appropriate.

If you happen to actually be confused at their blatant contempt when you deliver the lines above, then read on.

There’s Initials After Name. I Dub Thee Worthy To Mow My Literary Lawn.

This goes more into my days as an ad copy guy, but anyone with initials behind their name (Esq., CEO, VP, M.D., MBA, PhD., etc.), thinks they can write.  In the marketing world, this attitude is summed up as “I could write this ad for my firm if I wanted to, but my time is better spent elsewhere.” The same attitude my brother takes when he pays the neighborhood kids to mow his lawn.  It’s a cheap tactic to devalue your skills – and your craft – at the bargaining table.

It’s worse when you’re a fiction writer and these guys want to ask how much you make just to boost their egos.  And when you consider that they spent a third of their life and tons of student loans to get the paycheck, respect and status they earned. The idea that some shmuck with an overactive imagination and keyboard could get paid to make up outlandish tales, it’s inconceivable.

These guys do use words. They produce verbage by the truck load for contracts, peer reviews, business plans. Somehow they think this mean they can also write fiction – if they just set their mind to it.

Better yet, they don’t even have to write a novel to prove their theory. They just point to Grisham, Kafka and Crighton and BAM! Case in point without even having to hit the keyboard (betcha that the three gentlemen above would call bullshit on that. )

Considering the economy here in 2012, that’s probably how a lot of these guys ran their businesses into bankruptcy.

The worst wrinkle on that is the guy who has confused you with a marketing fellow and thinks that you two can be partners.

The Idea Guy

To sum up this is another smart fellow who has an idea. For his single idea (we call that a “concept” in writer speak).

And here’s the deal. He’s willing to share that idea with you (well, it could be something more, like asking you to write his/her memoir) for a 50/50 split. The idea, this gold nugget of the rarest imagination will tumble from his lips to your humble lap.  – if you ‘re lucky, this idea is more than single word (bioterroism!) and maybe a whole sentence (Innocent man has a twin serial killer!)

 From there, you only have to spend the next two years typing up the story, creating characters from whole cloth and wrapping a real plot around the concept.

Then this guy keeps hounding you with this great deal.  You dread the next time you meet him because he’s going to bring it up again. Sometimes he’s even joking about it, like he’s trying to be ironic about it, but you know deep down he’s hoping you’ll  bite.

David Morell (you might be familiar with the movie version of First Blood) says that he now tells people he’s a literary professor just to avoid these guys.  By the way, his On a Lifetime of Writing is required reading. Warning: The parts about Hollywood and the Publishing industry will crush you soul.

Not all idea guys have initials behind their names, though. Some of the guys making you this deal will be your neighbors.

The Local Boys In a Band

In the music industry, there’s the “Local Boys” effect.  It’s the dichotomy of having a packed the house 2,000 fans on MyFace when you do a gig on the other side of the state line, but at home nobody could care. To them, you’re the dude that played french horn in High School.

To a lot of people, you won’t ever be a writer unless you finally get that big payday. And even then, you won’t be considered made until the movie adaptation hits the big screen.

Until then, you’re just a co-worker, a weird acquaintance or family. Unless you are lucky, that means the people closest to you will be your worst enemies. Constantly hammering at you to give up your writing time to hang out or do what’s “best” for you.  

For my friend Paolo Bacigalupi, he had a supportive wife that helped him as he spent 10 years honing his craft into a multiple award winning books. I’m guessing that come time for the family reunion, there was a least one conversation that gave him some satisfaction.

And I can name at least six arrogant bastards that are going to pound on the keys like an infinite number of Shakespeareian monkeys if I ever get my own windfall .   And they are not complimenting me by any means. It would be more like a bunch of know-it-all neighbors digging in their backyard for oil after the village idiot found Texas Tea in the outhouse.

You can probably name a few like that yourself.  My suggestion? Start a list with these guys on top.  Then keep adding to this list. Add every naysayer that you can think of.  Include anyone, no matter how dear and close. Don’t hold back.

For your writing career, these are the people that going to be your Achilles Heel.

• These are the people you’ll have to say no to again and again.
• These are the people who are get jealous when you spend hours typing that “stupid” story
• They will keep telling you that it’s a waste of time because you’re getting paid every two weeks.
• And they all tell you that the did  believe in you … in the beginning

Congrats, you've jumped on the Writer's Train. Still wanna go for a ride?