A Deepening Madness

So here I am in Act II. Still approaching my Big Middle, already deep in the belly of the Big Madness.

Maybe it's because I plotted this one out first, but this time the madness took me quite early. I was barely a few chapters in when I hit my first bad morning-- instead of my usual 1000 words I did something like 100. This kept up for two, maybe three days before I had hit my first sleepless night. I got a lot written that night, dragged my ass through the next day.

Since then, this has become my process. I'm averaging two or three insomniac episodes a week. It's thrown my sleep patterns all out of whack-- I fall asleep suddenly, completely, and briefly, like someone stuck a naptime pin in my voodoo doll. Most days, my fatigue drags behind me like a black and rusted chain.

I tell you, it's enough to make me nostalgic for my razor-mania...

Topic Free Frippery

I've been stuck for a bloggable topic lately, most likely

because I'm coming up to my Big Middle and stuck deep,

deep, *deep* in the throes of Second Act Insanity. So, in an effort to break the Bloggy Ice, I thought I'd do this meme I stole from Charles and Candy.

Reading Habits

Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack?
I read whenever, feeding times included. My favorite reading snack would be beer. My most likely would be coffee.

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?
I'm not much for marking.

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book flat open?
Bookmark, or, in an effort to foster neuronal connection and stave off dementia, one simply remembers one's page.

Fiction, nonfiction, or both?
Both. Most books I read are fiction these days, since I got the hang of using the interwebs to do nonfiction research...

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of a chapter, or can you stop anywhere?
I can put a book down whenever I need to, though I do prefer to at least reach a scene break.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop and look it up right away?
Nope. Sadly, I tend to drop the word and the context in which it was used in a sort of mental file, that I may bring it out later, often horribly misused.

What are you currently reading?
The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (an old friend and constant comfort in times of darkness)
a biography of Henry Miller, title and author of which escape me

What is the last book you bought?
The Brightest Star in the Sky by Marian Keyes

Are you the type of person who reads one book at a time, or can you read more than one?
I’ll frequently have several going at a time. But one will usually be my main focus.

Do you have a favorite time/place to read?
I grabs it where I finds it.

Do you prefer series books or stand alones?
I'm easy.

Is there a specific book or author you find yourself recommending over and over?
Hmm...
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
The Bottoms by Joe Lansdale
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

How do you organize your books?(by genre, title, author’s last name, etc.)
Organization is a strong word for what I do. A *very* strong word. There are... groupings, but attributing any intelligent design to my shelves is like seeing a sense of purpose in the formation of a sand dune...

Spring

Photo credit: The Tiny Dynamo!

The bulbs are blooming. Buddy's better.

And the novel moves along, slow and steady.

The New and Improved, Steampunk Wordcount-O-Meter stands at 22,000 words. I've made my peace with my pace.

Though not with my tendency to alliteration...

Failing Well

One great secret to success in life: Failure.

More specifically, the ability to fail well. To shrug off your failure and come back just as hard as the first time. It's what makes champion sportsmen, successful inventors and industrialists and every career artist/writer/actor/dancer/musician/creative type you'll ever meet.

Thing is, that's harder than it sounds. Failure is hard on the ego, and failing at something you really, deeply care about can be devastating.

Or not. Thomas Edison failed something like 3000 times before he got a light bulb to work. Walt Disney was turned down by over 100 banks before he was able to finance his first amusement park. Actors get turned down at one heck of a lot of auditions for every part they get, and there isn't a writer alive, no matter how bestselling, without a fair-sized stack of rejection letters behind them.

Failure is how we succeed, *if* we don't let it get the best of us. And how do we do that? How do we take those rejections, those hard knocks, and come right back swinging?

The key is how we explain our failures to ourselves.

The ones who stay down when they fall, or need MUCH more time to get back up, are those who see their failures as Pervasive, Powerful and Permanent. For example, Joe Writer gets a rejection letter. He thinks, "I suck at everything (Pervasive), this letter proves it (Powerful). I'll *never* be any good as a writer (Permanent)." It takes him a week to work up the nerve to send the next submission, if he doesn't just stick his manuscript in a drawer and give up. After all, he's no good, right?

Those who bounce back do it first in their heads. The better they see their failures as Isolated, Weak and Temporary, the better they do on their next performance. Jane Scribbler gets her rejection letter too, but she is able to think, "It's only one letter (Isolated), and just one market (Weak). Somebody's bound to say 'yes'."

I know, this perspective is easier to say than to do, especially when your latest setback has you feeling like you've been kicked in the guts. But, if you want to succeed, learning to fail well is vital.

###

One side point: Denial, Distortion and Projection are also effective ways to deal with failure. Effective, but not exactly healthy. Refusing to allow that failure into your mental landscape (Denial), reshaping reality to meet our mental needs (Distortion) and pushing the causes of our failures outside ourselves (Projection-- often persecutory in nature), these are elemental ways our ego protects itself from damaging information.

Thing is, what protects our ego often blights our character. Blocking failure robs us of the opportunity to correct the causes of our failure and eventually succeed. Nothing good can come of this...

This One's for Charles

The Way of the Barbarian: Infusing Your Spiritual Life with Conan

Losing It

Charles posted on writers who destroyed themselves when they felt their best work was behind them. The examples he used were vivid: Hemingway, Howard and London, two suicides and one who drank himself to death.

Truth is, Charles barely skimmed the surface, but he did make his point. Writers struggle with the idea that they've 'lost it'.

Reading his post, it occured to me that I might have a useful perspective on this. You see, I've lost it a few times in life. Sometimes lost and found it again. Others, just, well... lost.

Comics: I haven't drawn a comic in some years now. My last original work was two parts of a trilogy that still sits unfinished. I never meant to stop, it just sort of worked out that way. The stories that have come since then have been novels, or sometimes paintings, but no comics.

Painting: While I'm on the subject, I was a keen painter in my twenties (back when paint was a newfangled invention) but I somehow managed to go the best part of a decade without picking up a brush. Those rare occasions I did try to paint, the work simply wasn't up to scratch. I made up my mind that those particular guns had been hung up.

Then one day a couple-odd Christmases ago, paintings were requested as gifts. I dutifully strapped on my brushes and made a big old mess out of some canvases. The work lacked my old magic (whatever that was), but it was too late: I was once again in love.

I got back to painting. The magic wasn't there, but the love was back. Then Frank Frazetta's Painting With Fire gave me permission to paint like my new self, if that makes any sense. New magic came. Last year I did my best to date. This year, well... it remains to be seen.

Tattooing: I've also certainly had fallow periods in my tattooing. Times when the work I turned out was... uninspired. When I'd look at the next tattoo and think I just couldn't be bothered.

Couple of those times I took a sabbatical, lived off my savings, took in illustration work, whatever. The most recent one, I couldn't afford to quit. So I just kept on keeping on. One day, I found inspiration again, this time in the work of Guy Aitchison, Kat Von D and Nikko Hurtado. I remembered why I picked up the needles in the first place. My focus shifted. The magic returned.

Personally, I think plateaus are natural. Exercising and learning, the curve tends to be periods of sharp, upward development and long, flat stretches where what really counts is the will to continue. No reason to think that things should be any different for creative skills.

Who says we have to be fresh, always doing our best?

And who says we can't?

Any writer who worries that they've 'lost it' should look to Johnny Cash for inspiration. Johnny came out of the gate with a bang: the first few years of his career, he wrote Walk the Line, Cry Cry Cry, Folsom Prison Blues and most of his classics. It was an unbelievable streak of creative brilliance.

Thirty-odd years later, he was still playing those same songs. He'd had a few bright spots creativity-wise (as opposed to commercially), but by the late 80's he was well and truly in the has-been category.

He was sure his best days were behind him. He even thought he'd quit recording, spend his time doing live concerts performing the music from his glory days.

Enter Rick Rubin, and a different vision. Johnny stripped down to the absolute essentials: his guitar and his voice. American Recordings may or may not be the best work he ever did, but it sure as hell showed the world his best days were far from over.

Maybe for Johnny (as for me), it was permission to be himself. To be that old guy with all the hard miles on him, not trying to fit who he used to be or who the other singers around him were. I know for me, those times I 'found it' again were also times I realized I had to be me, not a knock-off, even of my own earlier self.

Maybe if Hemingway hadn't spent so much time trying to reiterate Fiesta and For Whom the Bell Tolls, he would have had more, and better, work than The Old Man and the Sea. And maybe he wouldn't have been so damned depressed that he got the electroshock that made him suicidal.

And yeah, the Steampunk Word-O-Meter stands at 12,800 words. I think it's the weekend (my busy time at work) that's the culprit, not the scenes themselves...

Topsy Turvy

This is nuts. I can't say if it's the plotting, the stresses of month five of small-business ownership or those of life in general, but writing this novel is completely wonky.

Normally, I sweat and strain and shear gears loose in my head trying to handle sequels and quiet moments in general. It's a real effort to do my 1000+ a day, until I get to the fist fights, car chases, gun battles, etc. when the work simply flies along.

Not this time.

I've flown through these early stages. As this one's a mystery, I'm introducing suspects and red herrings, planting false leads, all that good stuff. I'm even, thanks to having a handle on my plot first, able to think about stuff like vision systems and imagery as I work.

Until I hit the Sequence 1 Climax. It's a small thing, a fist fight. It serves to:
a) establish the hero as at least somewhat tough (to qualify the later stompings he'll receive)
b) frustrate his Plan
c) show a few of his flaws and issues, and
d) wake up those readers who haven't had enough action in the last 5000 words.

Normally, I'd fly through a scene like that. Instead, it was a horrible, painful grind. Best I could manage was 200-300 words a day. For five days!

Once I got past it, I was back on 1000+. Freaking ridiculous.

At any rate, on Day, let's see.... Day 12, the New and Improved, Steam-Powered Daily Wordcount-o-Meter stands on 11,200 words. Not happy.