Do or Do Not.

One of my heroes inspires me by taking inspiration from another one of my heroes:

“I think Stephen King said some great things in On Writing — the main bit that I took away from that is the idea that you really have to sit down and do it. Treat it like work, spend a few hours TRYING to write every day. Sometimes it will be good and sometimes it will be bad, but there will be a lot of it. And really, it’s not the creating that’s the hard part, it’s the decision to sit down at your desk and start working.” — Jonathan Coulton, interviewed on CecilVortex.com, April 17, 2007

And another one of my heroes uses a quote from yet another to slam home a similar point:

“Yes, this is a form e-mail. Because I get asked this question a lot:

‘How do I become a comedian?’

The answer is very simple. It’s so simple, that no one can ever accept that it’s the ONLY WAY. But rest assured, the lucky few who understand how simple it is, and go and do this simple thing, ALWAYS succeed:

Go onstage a lot. Go onstage as much as you can.

Don’t read books on comedy. Don’t take comedy classes. Don’t ask anyone how you should write material, or what they think of your material. Develop on your own.

Go onstage. A lot. Every night. If there isn’t an open mike in your town, start one.

And then go onstage. A lot.

That’s it.” — Patton Oswalt, quoted by Warren Ellis, May 9, 2007

I’ve been bad lately. Pathetic, more like. I admit it. I haven’t had the mental energy to sit down and start working — or more likely I haven’t made the mental energy to do so. Not only have I not written anything here on the blog, I haven’t written anything at all. It’s an ugly, demoralizing circle I’ve found myself in: I’ve been in something of a funk and not writing, and not writing has driven me into even more of a funk.

Well, now it’s time bust that loop and kick off Operation: Defunkify.

It’s time to rediscover exactly what it is I’m wanting to do and refocus my energies in that direction. I know that part of what brings on my funk is losing my way, and even when I was writing before the funk came on, I could feel that way-losing happening. It’s time to do get out the map and do some course correction.

I can’t promise the results will show here on a daily basis, but they might. But if any of you have any additional inspirational bits of wisdom, I’d be all about hearing them. Bring ‘em on.

And wish me luck.

OK, people, here you go. Proof.

What follows is intended to eventually be a comic book script, though it doesn’t have any of the page or panel breakdowns that format would require. (Actually, right now it would be just as easy to adapt the format of what I’ve got here to comics, movies or TV. Beside the point.) It’s not incredibly detailed in terms of descriptions — I stuck mainly with just moving ahead with the dialogue, becuase that’s how the stories tend to unfold in my head. I didn’t want to kill my momentum because I got stuck on some bit of acting or scene description.

And believe me, I know it’s not fantastic, I know there are some places where people’s reactions to what’s going on aren’t quite right. But hey, it’s a very, very early first draft. This scene would take up six to eight pages in the first issue of my massive opus — and since it’s all introduction, it is inherently spoiler-free.

Caveats done. Enjoy.

(more…)

Brian sits down at his desk, turns toward me and looks me in the eye: “Holt,” he says. “I’ve got a bone to pick with you.”

“Oh, geez,” I think, assuming there’s some problem with one of the recent myriad architectural changes we’ve made to the system that’s causing him headaches with the stuff he’s working on. “What’d I do?”

“I’m making an executive decision about your life. I know it’s not really any of my business and not my place to make this decision, but… you’re going to stop writing about writing,” he says. “If you put the effort into actually writing something that you put into writing about writing…”

I cut him off: “Yeah, I know, B., I’ve heard that before. Many times, as a matter of fact. I’ve lost track of how many times Terry’s told me that. And c’mon, I’ve been writing some lately, I’ve wrote one scene the other night and then —”

“Good. So post it.”

“I — I can’t. It’d give too much away — that scene I wrote was way late in the story, it gives away too much of the —”

“Bullshit. Post it.”

“No, seriously, I can’t —”

“Then post some character sketches. Post anything. Show that you’re actually doing something and not just talking about doing something.”

It was at that point that I gave in.

So while I still don’t think I’ll be posting those scenes I wrote the other night — they really and truly give away the big ending and some major plot points — Brian’s executive decision will be enacted. I’ll start trying writing some bits and pieces of stories that I can actually post here. I make no guarantees about their quality just yet, but at least it’ll be proof that I’m gravitating more toward the “Do” than the “Do Not.”

Stay tuned.

Y’know, I’m a nice guy. I like being a nice guy. I don’t mean to say that I’m perfect or that I’ve never done wrong by anyone, but in general, I’m kind to most people. It’s one of the things I like about being me, and in general it’s worked out pretty well for me, I think.

Except, of course, when it comes to writing fiction.

My niceness unfortunately extends to the characters I’m writing about — I don’t like seeing people in pain, so it’s always been difficult to be the one responsible for causing pain, even if it’s happening to people who exist only inside my head. But I honestly don’t see a big market out there for stories about happy characters who just, I dunno, sit around and talk about how happy they are, characters whose biggest conflicts come in the form of fluffy pillow fights with their best friends.

Man, I managed to bore myself to tears just typing that last sentence.

However, I’m learning. No more Mr. Benevolent Uber-deity for me. This particular lesson, though a common precept of fiction writing, I’m taking from Mr. Joss Whedon because I’ve been thinking quite a bit about his characters recently. See, Joss has no problems thoroughly f*!%ing up his characters, even his favorite ones — hell, especially his favorite ones. He knows, as all (well, most) successful fiction writers do, that you get to the good stuff by throwing adversity at your characters and seeing how they deal with it. That’s when you find out what your characters are really made of — to hell with what they say, what do they do when they’ve just found out that their vampire boyfriend has once again turned into a murderous, insane monster?

All of this is why I’m suddenly very, very afraid for Kitty Pryde and Colossus in Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men.

I’ve watched enough of Whedon’s TV shows (and by that I mean every episode of all three of his series) to know that if there’s one thing he can’t stand, it’s a happy couple. Happy couples exist (usually only temporarily) in the larger Whedonverse specifically so that he can destroy them, tear them to shreds and see if they give up or come back together stronger than before. And right this very second, Kitty and Peter are happy, having just gotten together for the first time after years and years of being kept apart by small obstacles like other lovers, being on opposite sides of the ocean or one of them being dead.

So something very, very bad is about to happen to one — or both — of these two characters I care about.

I sincerely doubt that Joss is going to kill off either character: Kitty’s supposedly his all-time favorite comics character (not that I think that fact alone would stop him from killing her if the story demanded her death) and he just went to a lot of trouble to bring Colossus back from a several-year-long dirt nap. I have absolutely no idea what he’s got planned, though I suspect it’s going to end up being something horrible emotionally rather than physically. Whatever it is, I think it’s a fairly safe (and upsetting) bet that those two won’t be together once Astonishing’s current story arc is done.

And Joss is willing to do whatever it is he’s got planned for Peter and Kitty because his love for the story is greater than his love for the characters. [1] Whatever he’s going to do to them will reveal a lot about their inner workings, likely in a way that’s obvious in retrospect but hasn’t been considered before. (Remind me to detail for you later the brilliance of what he just did to/revealed about Cyclops. My god.)

I hope I’ve learned this lesson well. Last night, I wrote the first draft of a scene that would come toward the end of Act 2 of the ginormous comic book opus I’ve been chewing on for awhile. (Yes, I actually wrote something! No, I can’t post it, sorry.) And while that scene itself isn’t particularly brutal, it immediately follows a scene which clearly must have been, and the implications it has for the story’s characters are dire. Even better? That scene allows me to start setting up some hints and foreshadowing going all the way back to the beginning of the story, plot points and character moments I had no idea would be necessary until last night.

My point, if I have one? Be cruel to your characters and they’ll be good to you.

[1] I’ve talked about this topic before in relation to Whedon’s movie Serenity; if you’ve seen the movie or can deal with serious spoilers, please go check out that article. I was proud of that one.

My boy Timmy B has come to one of those conclusions that a great many of us who’ve tried to write any fiction have come to at one time or another: eventually, you’ve got to stop all of the pre-writing, get past all of that “planning” you think you’re doing, quit futzing around and dive into the real writing.

I know what he’s talking about, of course; I’m a Four-Time Procastination Through Pre-Writing World Champion (I pulled a John Larroquette and took my name out of consideration after my fourth win back in ‘96). I’ve got what feels like thousands of Microsoft Word documents and text documents and 3×5 note cards all with scribblings about my stories — and very, very little that’s actually part of the stories themselves. I know a whole bunch of reasons why that’s true, and I’m sure I’ve delineated them here before. I’m less interested right now in rehashing the why nots as much as I am in finding ways to break through them.

My latest experiment, which I haven’t really tried yet though I’m prepped for it, is a return to my roots: that’s right, I’m coming back home to pencil and paper. One of my problems (OK, so I lied — I’ll rehash one problem) is that I have this irrational feeling when I pull up a blank document on my computer that whatever I write has to be perfect. Whatever pours from my fingers into the keyboard isn’t a draft, it’s a final, publication-ready masterpiece. And that, of course, is just dumb. It’s also one of the chief causes of my creative paralysis.

Therefore, I’m hoping I’m able to trick my head into loosening up some by using tools which, by their very nature, can’t be used for a final draft. Anything I write on the loose-leaf paper I bought a few nights ago will automatically have to go through the revision process when I type it in, so, really, it’s okay to let it suck. I’m gearing up to try actually working on one of the stories that’s been simmering in my head for awhile, so wish me luck.

And wish Tim luck while you’re at it. He’s going the “if I tell the public that I’m going to write $thing, people will by-damn hold me to it” road, so I’m throwing all of the considerable support of Do or Do Not his way. Get to work, Tim!

(Speaking of rehashing, by the way: it turns out this is the second time I’ve written on this topic. The first time was almost exactly a year ago. I’m sure there’s something to be said in there for the cyclical nature of something or other, but I couldn’t possibly tell you what it was. Unless I went and wrote it out longhand first.)

As part of their ongoing campaign to ensure that my entire life is managed via Google, we now have Google Notebook, an application that looks like it could be tremendously helpful when doing research for writing projects, among other things. (You’ve got to have a Google account to use Notebook, of course.)

Notebook allows you to copy bits of text and images from web pages to your notebooks through an easy Firefox plugin (one’s available for IE, too, but since I don’t actually use IE, I can’t tell you for sure how well it works). You can access your notebooks with one click from the bottom of the browser — and notice that’s twice I’ve said notebooks, because it seems you can have as many as you want. Each notebook can have section headings inside, and the notes can be reordered through a drag-and-drop interface. When you’re ready, you can print the entire notebook through one click. Further, you can make any of your notebooks public if you so choose and you can search through other people’s public notebooks right from the main interface.

Like I said, Notebook seems like it could be a pretty damn useful tool for accumulating research notes or other ideas. WriterFriends (or anyone, really), let me know if you try it out and how well it works out for you!

Many of my friends are writers, and I think a few of them have even tried their hands at writing screenplays. I don’t believe any of them could have been all that successful with the screenwriting yet because I haven’t felt the envious urge to shank any of my “friends” in the neck. (Saundra, you’re exempt since you were already writing screenplays when I found out you existed; no neck-shanking for you.)

I don’t want to do anything that’s going to bring on said shankings, but I found a screenwriting resource I just couldn’t keep to myself. I thought it best to share this site slap full of screenwriting advice with all of my fellow wannabe Hollywood hacks. It’s filled with chunky nuggets of wisdom such as:

Substituting onomatopoeic words in place of these run-of-the-mill verbs is a quick and easy way to inject some metaphorical hot beef into your screenplay. Onomatopoeia, of course, is the process of creating words that phonetically resemble the sounds they’re supposed to represent, such as buzz or fart. Not only will onomatopoeic verbs keep your screenplay feeling fresh and minty, but they can also help to splush a more vivid and engaging cinematic vision.

[Did you see what I did there? Splush is the onomatopoeic version of the word paint! In screenwriting terms, this is called a transition (or tranny). As in: “Did you hear that Mamet got caught doing a tranny?”]

I hope all of you can internalize all of the helpful info this site’s got of offer and apply it to your own work.

Your neck will thank me for it.

I came across the following quote today in a new column from “Bablyon 5″ head honcho/Amazing Spider-Man writer J. Michael Straczynski at Newsarama, and I thought that a number of people who read this site might benefit from it as much as I’m sure I will. Much of it is “yeah, yeah, okay, I’ve heard that a million times before,” but maybe it’s the millionth-and-first time that will change some small but critical pathway in my/your brain and make it resonate in a new way.

Your only real competition…is with yourself, with your fears, your insecurities, your determination to learn what needs to be learned; your willingness to apply ass to chair and fingers to keyboard and Get It Done instead of Talking About It. Too many beginning writers leave their stories forever unfinished because as long as the work is incomplete…it can’t be judged. Write. Finish it. Write the next thing. Rinse, repeat. Learn as much as you can. Write as much as you can. Because the more you write, the better you will write. It’s no different than any other muscle. Exercise it, and it becomes stronger.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much of my writing I would consider “art” versus how much I would consider “craft.” How, I wonder to myself, do my percentages of inspiration versus perspiration play out? (And yes, these are the kinds of things I set my brain working on so that I don’t have to actually, y’know, write anything.)

My fear is that I’m all craft, no art. I don’t say that to dismiss the importance of craft — in fact, depending on exactly what’s being written and for what purpose, the craft can be even more important than the art. And I know I’m good at the craft. I communicate well via the written (or typed) word. I like to think it’s one of the things I do best. But I don’t want to think that there’s no art behind the craft, that there’s no soul in what I’m writing. And too often, I’m afraid that’s true.

I think it’s related to my ongoing struggles with figuring out exactly what it is I’m supposed to be writing. No, wait, that’s not true; I do know exactly what I’m supposed to be writing. The ongoing struggle is with the fact that I tend to work on what I think I’m supposed to be writing moreso than on what I want to be writing. When I write something that my brain tells me to write rather than when my heart tells me to (ref. aborted YA novel from last fall), I can’t really pretend to be very surprised when my heart’s not really in it, can I?

(The terrible truly thing: I keep having to come to the same conclusion about my passions every few months or so. Staying on point is, apparently, not one of my areas of strength. I think I need one of those reminder bracelets to tell me to keep focused on the things I actually want to write. Anyway.)

I discussed this point with a friend of mine, and she told me that she didn’t really think about her writing in these terms at all. The art grew naturally out of the craft, essentially, and I can certainly see that, even if it hasn’t proven true for me; perhaps I just never stick with anything long enough to let the art truly emerge. But the most important thing she said to me pointed out something I always, always overlook when I’m writing: she tries to focus on her writing as “play.” “Play” is something I so rarely allow myself to do when writing — my perfectionism seems to have robbed me of the ability to just loosen up, to have fun while I’m writing.

And it should be fun for me, shouldn’t it? My writing doesn’t have to support my family. No one (other than me) is pressuring me. There’s no reason to make it this Big Tortured Thing, which of course is exactly what I do every single time I look at a blank document. I’m not saying that I shouldn’t take the writing seriously, but clearly I don’t need to be taking it quite so seriously if it’s crippling my ability to write at all.

Writers in the audience… you have any opinions on the relationships between art, craft and/or play? Do you have fun when you write or is it a chore to be gotten through to get to the shiny finished product on the other side?

Sometimes I like to write my wife poems for special events or holidays — but because I’m really not much of a poetry kind of guy, I don’t usually take these poems too seriously. I’ve written her odes to Gene Wilder’s jowls, I’ve perverted entire sections of songs from Disney musicals. Recently, though, I’ve been upping the ante for myself and started setting myself specific structural challenges before starting to pen my preposterous poems.

The first, as you might remember, involved the poem I wrote her for her birthday in January. It was her thirty-sixth birthday, so I decided that not only should the poem have exactly thirty-six words (not too hard to accomplish), but the title should have exactly thirty-six letters (much more difficult to pull off). But I did it and was reasonably proud of the result — especially given that the trick was subtle enough that I doubt anyone would ever have noticed it if I didn’t point out. (Really, I just wouldn’t have expected anyone to give the poem anything more than a quick read.)

My newest trick was a little bit less subtle, yet I still think very few people ever would have noticed had I not mentioned it to Terry (though given that there’s now precedent to my doing goofy things to these poems, maybe someone would have). I first though about making her Valentine’s Day poem a simple acrostic, but that seemed too easy. I knew that it would jump out at any reader paying even the smallest bit of attention. No, I needed something more complex. So I thought I’d reverse it and have the first letters readingup form the acrostic.

Better, but still: not enough challenge. I then decided that the last letter of each line should be a regular top-down acrostic-but-at-the-end-of-the-line. I had my pattern — and my challenge — set! And not only did I succeed in piecing the thing together, but I think the message of the poem is actually coherent, even if it’s not the most romantic Valentine’s Day poem ever written.

Twoo Wuv Needs Not The Marketing

You never can tell these days with
a modern woman, a twenty-first century kind of gal, a
“domestic goddess,