I'm a Liar, But For a Good Cause

I blogged a post clearly stating I was 'on hiatus' but I'm clearly a liar. The frequency is still high, but it also comes with the intention of it intact.

I'm not procrastinating on my main project.

When I posted that, it was because the sheer amount of time I spent on scheduling blogs, times I was realizing I had bowed out of writing, had exhausted myself to goals I wanted to place as a priority.

However, I created a sort of unconscious reward system. Now that I delegate writing to the first thing I do, I've been putting quality hours towards where I want them, using blogging as a way to take a break, not the first priority. Sometimes you just have to trick yourself into a new order.

And of course, I'm enjoying the hell out of writing my book. I'm playing with some fun arcs, my favorite mix of seriousness, adventure and humor. Although it gets more complex, keeping track of the logic as I go, I also develop a deeper kinship with the characters and events along the way. To think too deeply on the challenge can cause hesitation, but once I get going, the elusive magic sparks anew.

You don't get many lies that come guilt-free, so consider this sort a true victory. 

Why Write Fantasy?

For some people, this is probably an easier answer. Maybe it's always been your favorite genre or it's how you think. In my case, most of the entertainment I consume isn't fantasy. Video games, yes, but aside from my love of superheroes, I'm not someone that looks for fantasy shows or movies first. My tastes tend to lead me to comedy, dramas, medical and crime, even documentaries. So when I ask myself 'why write fantasy?', I had to do some digging. I'll have to jump around a bit, but there are a lot of layers to this.

I've come into adult concepts since childhood that I've struggled to understand even as an adult. When we struggle to understand, sometimes we give up and end up either accepting it unexplained or developing a stance of ignorance. There's even a lot of ego in our youth that tells us it's tolerance that makes it acceptable to just let our emotions lead, but as we grow up, we look for logical ways to be at peace with the unknown. We start to accept that the good and bad in people is subjective and variable and that we often say things that don't match our actions. For example, while people might generally see as tolerant, we often say something before we've thought it out that twists that. I watched an old video where Kelly Osbourne slipped up and said "If you kick Latinos out of your country, who will be cleaning your toilets, Donald Trump?" And most of us winced but at the same time, we knew what she bungled at trying to simplify too quickly. In this country, immigrants, legal or no, have a reputation for a work ethic that most entitled citizens, including Trump himself, would never touch. Kick out the people who are grateful to do thankless jobs and what good is it for any of us?

Because I'm not gifted with impeccable selections of speech on the fly, I tend to be more sympathetic when people, who normally do harmonize with their favorable character, stick their foot in their mouth and realized their attempts to simplify have to be explained with a lot more complexity once they've smeared it. I replay a lot of bungled conversations in my head. Sometimes even when I do well, I'll think of ten better ways to say it later. Words can have a powerful effect on our reactions and emotions, but I agree when free speech, hate speech or not, is protected. Words themselves might incite a lot of strong things, but I believe that the listener, the consumer, is ultimately responsible for their actions, that words are not actions unless they directly threaten to escalate (I'm going to kill you) or incite violence (we will meet here to kill you). I don't know about you, but I want to know who hates me. I don't want these people, disgruntled, silenced, sitting in basements, stirring a bitter stew that will hit me without warning. I think oppressing speech is doing more towards encouraging violence than just being disturbed by vitriol. 

That being said, communication of my ideas is very important to me, not that everyone fall in love with everything I say and do. When we speak out, we must accept that people will react, but the consequences of reacting violently are illegal and a crime and you can't blame words alone-- only your own immaturity towards the manifestation of your reactions. I certainly encourage people to counter hate speech with rebuttals and logic whenever possible-- I envy speakers like Jordan Peterson, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and even comedians like Joe Rogan. Even if you don't like their message or what I'm about to say, it's hard to deny that they deliver their messages brilliantly and with a practiced ease I envy. I struggle to get better at public speaking, but I think I would love to say things that such talented people could deliver with their focus and force of reason. I suppose as a woman, it's taboo to say that I would want a man to speak my words for me. I might also pick Christina Hoff Summers, a choice feminist whose levelheadedness I also envy, would work too. What these people have in common-- they claim responsibility for their words, grow with new information, and don't really lose their cool even when they raise their voice. They survive Q&As without dissolving into incoherent frustration.

Even explaining that, it still seems lacking to sufficiently encompass my choices as a writer. It is difficult to summarize, but words are a responsibility with consequences that can be justified, right or wrong, but how do we choose a medium to explore them?

Again, why fantasy, when I clearly have a love for understanding reality and have a solid basis in it? Well, the whimsical outlet of fantasy allows me to explore the deeper concepts of light and dark through metaphor. Not good and bad, mind you, since moral concepts also have levels of societal acceptability and individual experience. Often, there's a general consensus of what we know we can or can't be punished for, but individual mentality or even mob mentality often kicks against where 'morals' attempt to oppress people concerning even the use of their own bodies. And yes, personally, even when it's widely accepted to be moral or immoral, we come up with logical exceptions that bear consideration. It's extremely difficult for people to voice unpopular opinions, so we all need to find a playing field where we can test those doubts, fears, and curiosities. Non-fiction, where my life is concerned, has too many consequences for being tactlessly earnest.

It would be nice if adulthood was a magical escape from childhood dilemmas, but as an adult, I'm often pulled back into the lessons of my immediate past. I know both what it is like to be a child that had been through hell that some adults have not and to be an adult who is often disregarded as childish (I laugh freely, often and girlishly even at 37). I write adult fiction right now because my childhood just isn't kid friendly. I do use whimsical themes to bridge the gap but these adult themes do resonate with my real battles from adolescence.

Some people could make the argument that it is inappropriate for characters of a certain age to run into certain situations. Unfortunately, it's an uncomfortable truth for some of us. It's not a mark of how little your parents care or love you because it IS a sign of love and trust for them to let you explore the big bad world and hope you come back, alive, when you need a respite. The world does not and cannot protect us from the curiosities of reality. Nor should it. It should definitely have laws to protect against harm and it does, ones that at best will change as the world needs it to. What stands is that a child can and does get beat down by adult things. Telling a child that they can't possibly understand insults, abuses and raises their vitriol when they are certain they are not just living in it, but are one of the new demons who come to poke and ridicule them. Disbelief only reinforces it.

And yes, there are also attention-seeking predators, even children, who see that a tortured soul draws the sort of attention they want and mimics it insincerely. One thing I love about a Jordan Peterson video I watched is that he doesn't believe in 'erring on the side of caution'. (video here -- I encourage you to watch it and form your own impressions. Just taking what I say on faith is like playing a game of telephone. Always go from the source in case my interpretations carry a bias.)When he suspects that a patient is asking him to cater some demand of uniqueness with a privilege that they simply feel entitled to but doesn't stand to help them to pretend, he calls them out on it. He admits that sometimes he is wrong, but shows that it is imperative that we test the resolve of people's demands, to see if they are simply trying to mold others or truly find themselves. As a psychologist, he has seen that entertaining people's delusions does not help them learn how to grow as themselves. It's a very tough topic to discuss and he manages to find the words very eloquently. I even appreciate that he shows his thoughtfulness and consideration as he attempts to arrive at his answer. He's not just reading off of a script or parroting a false ego.

Diverting from the technical sides of my choice, I feel a kinship with harsh realities and the possibilities of fantasy. Life isn't just receiving our scars, but bearing them, even showing them in the sunshine. We can assemble armies or meet magical creatures, attune to our inner child or come to terms with being an adult. Even when we explore ourselves through our work, it doesn't assure hidden agendas, at least not intentionally. I've heard people make rather nefarious leaps of accusation-- underage sexuality? Pedophilia! Women writers detailing sex? Turns men gay (and I'm talking heterosexual sex even; apparently we force male readers to resume the stance of a woman to trick them into lusting for the male body. I couldn't even make this shit up)! Graphic calculated violence? Serial killer in the making!

I've always been a firm believer that saying it/playing it is often enough. Playing the games, watching the movies, reading the books, is often the satisfaction of the curiosity not the catalyst to demand more. When I write controversial topics, it is not done in secret delight, always the representative of my desires. I write things that make me downright uncomfortable. I can write something that titillates me and something that disgusts me in the same day even. Of course, those attention-seeking predators I mentioned before often look to call these the catalysts of their murder sprees, rapes, etc. Why? Because we create excuses for addictions, heinous acts, absolve people as brave for doing bad things and 'redeeming themselves', a culture that CREATES visibility for monstrous acts, encouraging people to abuse themselves and others so they can earn relevance for just doing what decent people do invisibly. Writers see this and make them into believable villains. Whether it humanizes or dehumanizes them, whether it's right or wrong is moot. We should continue to piss each other off, entertain each other, release words in ways that make people become curious, challenged. Do you back people up into a wall and tell them they're not cornered if they climb? Is there a rope, a ladder, a trampoline? Is the wall tall or short? Do you stop your pursuit or do they have to worry you're concealing a knife to drive into their back when they turn away? Presentation is everything.

Fantasy just aligns with the way I want to present my ideas. I'm not writing a book on psychology because it can't always be clinically accurate or documented in studies. There's a lot we don't understand about the brain and how it works. What other place could I bring to life the monsters under the bed, the monsters you mistake for friends, the smiles that hide the villains? It's not the only genre I will use, but right now, I'm in love with the way I can build characters and plots and puzzles and worlds and creatures, to lay color to the concepts and ideas around me? How else can I bridge the muddy transitions of childhood and adulthood with any clarity or understanding? How else can I mystify romance and horrify violence, overblowing it but making it logical to the landscape?

Fantasy is whimsy, fantasy is darkness, fantasy is triumph and tragedy.

On that note, I really can't wait to see this Welcome to Marwen movie. I'm not a very emotional consumer, but I teared up a bit just on the trailer. It does align with themes I work with and even inspired this post. One day, I hope to build up the scale of ways to present my own ideas. It's not unusual for writers to see movies in their head while creating, but I'm also well aware that a screenplay is a different creature than a novel (hey, did I mention I'm a screenplay editor? So it seems like a logical course to try it out someday). You can't dream too big.

Fish Parenting: Why People Say Pets are Like Children

Aside from notions of species superiority, there are undeniably parallels in being parent to a human being and parent to some creature that depends on you in some way. I can say this because I've been both. I've raised my nephews through most of their lives, from infant to middle schoolers. I've changed diapers, dried tears, taught life lessons, loved to the point it aches.

Before working at Petco, I didn't think much of fish. I had fallen in love with a betta fish when I was a child, crimson bodied, prismatic fins, completely non-aggressive. Be careful-- he'll fight other fish. Except he didn't. Claude made friends with all the fish we put him with. When he met his end because my brother decided to add craw-dads (crawfish to everyone else), it broke my heart, but I never thought much of them after. 

I cleaned fish tanks at work; mostly because everyone else hated doing it, but I found it incredibly calming. We'd get new fish all the time, but it was the cichlids that intrigued me. All the other fish-- tropical flakes. For cichlids, I was told they liked the pellets. While caring for them, I noticed we had one little yellow guy in the bunch (an electric yellow labido) and he wasn't getting sold. He grew bigger little by little and often was the one starting a 'dance' with the other cichlids, a ridiculous up and down flitter along the edge. It made me laugh.

When I went home, I looked things up. Starting a tank, what to get, what they ate. Wasn't planning on getting any fish, but I did want to know more about them. Maybe subconsciously I was preparing to be a fish parent. And then I decided it would happen.

It wasn't the goldfish you get at a fair. I started nesting, so to speak. I shopped for a stand, a filter, a heater, decorations, gravel, a gravel vacuum, food. I set each thing up as I got it, but I was waiting for the large tank sale. However, I couldn't wait because I grew attached to the yellow one and I didn't want him sold. So I bought a little ten gallon set and took it home to set up. I'll admit, I didn't do it 'right'. I conditioned the water but didn't stumble on the nitrogen cycle information. Luckily, cichlids are hardy enough that they survived my beginner's duh. I didn't just get the yellow one, but a lively blue mbuna too.

I set up the large tank properly-- seeding the tank with bacteria to start the cycle off of rocks in their current tank, testing the water until the levels were perfect. Holy crap, the little guys were terrified by the transfer. Perhaps instinctively, they must've thought bigger tank meant they were primed to be food for a predator. They swam cautiously until they began to revel in a world 5.5x what they were used to.

Every little problem was a panic. I would cruise over the equivalent of FishMD pages for every little thing out of the ordinary-- tumors? Bloat? Parasites? Aggression? What the hell did I get myself into? And then they started breeding! It was one of those moments were I actually relaxed-- cichlids don't breed unless you're taking great care of them. But holy hell, how do I take care of the babies? Luckily, nature builds that duty into them the way they were meant to. They worried, they grew, they learned on the fly just like we do. Okay, they also eat the ones they can catch, but fish do cull the population to keep their species healthy. (Oddly enough, they were almost 'reserved' about that part-- I never once saw them eat their young, but you'd notice when the numbers dropped.)

Flashing-- that was another wild card in fish behavior. Most pages worry you with concerns of parasites or aggression or an illness. It's where they quiver or rub along things like a cat. Crap, mine do it all the time! It took a while to observe that this was also a cichlid thing. My dominant especially likes to flash when he's annoyed, angry, even happy and, like any parent, it was an emotional cue and I could tell the difference between them in the subtleties. It's those things you start to fall in love with. You start to know their faces, the way that only they use them, the things they try to tell you when they can't speak. They're sweet and mean and wise and reckless. They watch me too. I'll never figure out what could possibly interest them about me most of the time, but they do little dances when I talk to them, get jealous of whichever ones I'm speaking to and try to cut in front to absorb my affection.

Okay, maybe their deaths aren't as devastating or long lasting in our grieving. Then again, maybe they are. I'm not saying it's a matter of ranking, but with fish, I accept their short-lived nature. It hurts when I do form an attachment. When my dog and cat died, I mourned for months, just like I've done with people I loved, but fish are very different. How, it's harder to say. I worry about them but there's a sort of knowledge about their unpredictable health I've come to prepare for. With our own kind, we tend to develop longer lasting attachments or instant dislikes. 

Love and hate don't feel quite the same, although the intensity can. There are so many different kinds of love that a 'different' love often doesn't have a vocabulary we can make another understand. I always laugh when I hear parents of human children protest with unshakeable arrogance that you don't know 'love' until you've had a human child. They are willing to forget that there are parents who never connect to their children so strongly if at all. There are parents who adopt with not a speck of blood shared between them and love that child as their own. Not all of us need to have people that share our face to feel a real and meaningful connection. Many people even connect more strongly to other species than their own, either through trauma or experience. I could say that you don't know love until it is a choice and you make the choice again and again. It's not about being unconditional or expected or accepted. Love, even short-lived, leaves its mark on how we grow and learn to receive and give it. People will even try to attach conditions on what someone else considers unconditional love, but in truth, we just don't get to define it for anyone but ourselves. My mom and dad, the most incompatible people to outsiders and even people close to them. They fought like children but came together like soulmates even after divorce and drama. It wasn't storybook romance and it wasn't constantly evident, but it existed-- without simplification or reason.

Now my nephews. I knew I was bound to them from the time they were born and it was the stupidest thing I could do to myself. I knew they would be used against me and that I would never have the legal right to decide for them as a legal parent or guardian does. I knew it would be turmoil, sometimes absolute hell, that as much as I loved them, there would be days I didn't like them at all. I knew I had no business being a parent, that I didn't want to risk either passing on my demons nor bringing kids into a world I couldn't vouch for. I didn't choose to love my nephews either, but it happened. Against all reason, against all intentions, I had already felt they were mine. Feelings don't equal the absolute reality, so for years, I couldn't trust like that a regular parent does. 

I have my father to thank for giving both me and them the security to give them that chance. He told me under no uncertain conditions that he would not let them get taken from our secure situation on the whim of their parents. It was hard to get them to trust that I wouldn't leave them or let them get taken away, hard to even step aside so they could bond to their grandpa as they had come to rely on me. I had to build a bridge and help them meet in the middle. My nephews were socially haunted and it took a lot of nurturing to help them build confidence in the validity of their emotions. They want for nothing, but they aren't spoiled either. They understand responsibility and trust. These aren't things that came overnight. It was a battle for all of us, not a fairy tale of starting a family.

Of course, people asked me when I would have 'kids of my own'. A socially acceptable question that really shouldn't be. Another thing I had to laugh about. They ARE my kids. I have no desire to start from square one with 'my own'. They're not 'practice kids' or any less than ones that I might pop out of my own body. Aw, it's such a shame; why is it always the people that would make great parents are never the ones that want them? My situation was something, not exactly tailored to me, but one I tailored into my existence. I can't say I sacrificed anything other than drug addiction or useless wandering. These kids were a wake-up call that made me into the person I am proud of now. I've had to adjust. I don't believe I would have handled 'my own' as well because I think sometimes the supposed guarantees give us room to take things for granted.

Parental affection isn't something universal. It's built on many, many blocks. Things like death or disappointment or consequences of life are not things we can gauge nor can we bear all the blame or understand all its intricacies. When a pet parent says they love their pet as much as you love your child, they do. We all know what our hearts filled to bursting feels like and it's not lesser based on your opinions of it. When people say it's just as hard, it is, because people lose sleep over it just the same as you. Or, as Bill Burr said, the stakes are higher with pets. Your kid bites me and they get time out; my dog bites you and it gets put down. Now, you could put everything on scales and play the 'my misery is worse than your misery' game, but why not just trust that people know what they're feeling. Hell, maybe they will have kids one day and join the 'you don't know love until you've had a child' group, but don't diminish a present claim like you're some fucking clairvoyant of their self-expression.

That being said, I'll break into another short topic: memoirs. I could easily fill a fat book with my stories now. In fact, my life might be incredibly dull in the next thirty years and have nothing more to contribute to it. However, I'm willing to bet that some things age better with time. No, my past won't change, but my impressions and understanding of it may. I often gather pieces of my journey along the way, look at how life made my view of things change. It's not that we can't write them when we're still young. It's just that the most captivating parts are how we come to grips with our hardships and triumphs, how they mapped out our lives. The longer you can wait, the more opportunity for depth and epiphanies you get. Also, sometimes you just want to see if you can outlive anyone who might take issue with it. I know that's morbid and we don't like to think about it, but a memoir is never just our story. There are sometimes casualties we never meant to drag through our truths.

Whatever you take away from this, sometimes you just have to trust your intuition and be okay with people not understanding the depth of your emotion. There will be people who only see the shiny bits you put on social media (or the gritty ones) and judge without really knowing where you're coming from. And that's okay. Sometimes we mean to say something simply and get interrogated when, no, we don't quite understand what we feel. Sometimes you just have to walk away, contemplate, try to develop the vocabulary and try again. Words will just never be able to convey it all. Try anyway.

Double-Posting! I Have To!

On the eve of the numerical anniversary of my date of birth (=birthday eve), I have to admit, I couldn't do it. I could not continue this farce of relaxation when the muse has demanded my suffering.

Over-dramatic, I know, but I pounded out a few thousand words towards the baby fresh third part of my book and I regret nothing. I suck at relaxing and even if people were just flocking to kidnap me, it wouldn't have made a difference. After a great idea smacked me in the face, I was just way too eager to run with it, eager to see how I could make it unfold in the continuance of the story.

I definitely plan to be in the moment while I visit friends and family tomorrow, but that was all the more reason to succumb to the muse and get some serious writing done. Drafting isn't always such a breezy process, but I was simultaneously editing the shaky beginning and moving on at a pace that was almost inhuman, a feeling both like addiction and so much better for the lack of bad side effects and 'coming down' (although, my back is a little cranky from engaging in a bit of bad posture).

It was a great day. I can always use those. Watching stories grow is a thing of beauty. Taking the reins is a feeling like no other. Sure, sometimes characters end up swerving in directions of their own, but it's an organic and chaotic thing to head-hop and never gets effortless to nail down, even for someone who lives with a butterfly brain. 

I've chased enough butterflies on Skyrim to be completely sure that's the perfect analogy. I thought about Pokemon but it's more like having no Pokeballs. You're just clicking wildly in the general area until you get a... shiny pair of butterfly wings. (Don't worry, butterfly, you're just a caterpillar again...)

I should probably sleep now.

The Distance and the Intimacy: The Love Affair with Writing

We're all consumers before we are creators, no matter how much our parents/caregivers might have insisted the massive dumps in our diapers were a sight to behold. Learning faces through the blur of first sight, hearing every strange noise to prickle the ear-- assuming we're born with all senses intact, that is. (Perhaps this is why some deprivation of sense is fascinating to me, but I'll get to that.)

What do I mean by distance and intimacy? Well, not all of us really know that our 'passions' have longevity so there's a time issue involved. Sometimes, and for long periods of time, we may break up with our passions, cheat on them, all the while pining for them. Sometimes a particularly sensitive piece creates a different phenomenon of distance/intimacy. Sometimes we need to blubber and roll in the juices and sometimes we need to be the harsh logical judge of it. We get through the passion parts and then poke, edit, play, indulge, reject, accept-- it's 12 stages of grief and euphoria, but we each fill in the blanks. I've said before-- ebb and flow and some of the best writing I've seen uses the push and pull of development, to align with the very real state of many struggles. Something the characters move on their motivations, sometimes things have to happen to them. Do we take the omniscient look and hash it out in great detail or do we limit it to experience the spotty details alongside the character? Neither one is king when it comes to depth. From any perspective, we can get uncomfortably close or coldly analytical.

There are a lot of aspects to me, for one, that people try to explain. It's especially trendy these days to assume to speak for others, even when the subject is more than capable. I suppose you could narrow down my attitudes to trauma, whether it be my sexuality, my draw towards art and writing, my lifestyle. You could correlate things simply, but there's more to that history than I will ever feel comfortable writing or explaining, especially when it pertains to the 'stressors' outside of myself, the people that did and still can terrorize me if I step over the line. I will not give them that piece of fame, to ride on whatever failures or successes I have in my life with association. If you have bogeymen in your life, give them to your fictions. A memoir is the thing to write if you outlive them all.

That being said, there are 'other' things. Things I stopped trying to understand, things I use and learn to master as much as possible and I don't aim to be mysterious with those so I'll describe this the best I can without using labels that might give you false impressions.

I've struggled with neuropathic issues from a very early age. For no apparent reason or stressor, I've temporary lost my sight or hearing or sense of touch, or had them 'heightened' to unbearable and painful levels. No amount of searching ever gave me answers and in most cases, I was too afraid to tell. I had some wonderful teachers along the way that saw me melting down in my confusion and helped me, no questions, no words. Sometimes it was just a space to cry in their office, sometimes it was me interrupting to go to the bathroom. The counselor, for some reason, really liked me, even gave me her home phone number and told me to call if I needed it, made sure all my teachers knew that I could leave class any time I needed to (on days I bothered to show up, I didn't leave class at all-- kind of an all-or-nothing when it comes to showing up). It's not that these people thought I was suicidal, but looking back, I think they knew my 'other' better than books or doctors had any grasp of back then. They also saw my potential. Another thing I couldn't see without hindsight, but learned to trust some people when they said good things about me.

Because I don't see what's in front of me or, rather, rarely do. I see things more clearly looking back, sometimes beating myself up for how stupid or ineffective I was in the moment. I became adept at trying to recreate the person I wanted to be, to try to learn to be a person that can see the moment or even a little ahead, learn to anticipate the world around me. Somewhere in the invention of myself, I became a storyteller. I never saw a place for THAT (I never could get the taste for lying) in my life, but there was a pocket I'd stumbled on where worlds did wait. Despite all the characters and events happening over 'there', it could still be a lonely place, not a place of inside jokes and the things I could talk about with others who weren't familiar. So I wanted to find ways to show people. I was already building those places, learning to express through art and writing what I struggled to say.

An honest place, one I have trouble lying about too. It's not a place that can actually speak for my desires, doubts or fears, just a gathering ground from my journey in this world. And I don't have these fascinating stories of world travel, but I can simulate it through the means that I have. It's maddening, a bloom of chaos and beauty. It can be safe and warm or frigid and frightening. It affects moods that people can't see the reason for, and sometimes I don't even know why I feel or act the way I do. It can be a real bastard trying to recreate it for the sharing. Yeah, sometimes I thought about giving up because creation and using it to funnel what I don't really understand is never a safe place. It's erratic and it's not structured. Because of that, writing...

Writing holds structure or none at all. The only demand is what you intend for it. I wrote stories for school, but then I wrote stories in school when I was supposed to be doing something else. Just little stories. 'Born to Play Video Games' and 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Kitties'... (I loved the Turtles, but the idea of drawing humanoid cats was just so appealing.) I wrote poems when I fell in love with rhythm and rhyme. It was music and color in words alone. Alongside this passion, always came the impulse and whimsy of 'doodling'. I love that word too, doodling. So often it was said to me in an attempt to belittle it or guilt me for wasting time, but doodling and noodling about-- those things brought me closer to a feeling of rightness. Doodling has brought me closer to some of the most amazing people in my life-- my best friends, family, and my friend's children especially. No matter how much adulting pressures my drawing to be 'more', kids always give me this surreal sense of expertise I forget to see sometimes. They're not comparing me to 'masters' or ticking off all they've liked better; they're capable of just loving it for what it is. (Not unique to kids, by the way-- my best friends always seem to lift me up like this too. Also people who are terrible at lying, but are also likely to clam up if they don't want to hurt my feelings either.)

It's hard to say whether I can make my characters and worlds resonate the same way they do with me. I'm not someone who can see the hook, the blurb, the simplification of the big picture. My love affair with writing and creating is selfish but it wants to be generous. It can feel superficial, it can feel overly deep. Courageous and cowardly. I can't lie, but sometimes I can omit or gloss over, defense mechanisms for survival and a habit I try to break.

I write because... it's too big to contain. Because otherwise it can leak out where I don't want it to. Just like my neuropathic struggles, it's not about the cure, but working with the intuitive treatment of it. Writing is often a sensitive organism, sometimes needing compassion, sometimes needing tough love. Raising kids-- much the same. You treat every kid the same and they lose sight of what could motivate them to improve or change. I don't discipline my nephews the same, nor reward them the same and when they notice this, I explain the circumstances, let them see the logic (the punishment fits the crime and so on). Almost always, a punishment or a reward merits a discussion, but there is also a lot of time for play, contemplation, or things being what they will be. I never wanted to be a parent, but like most labels, it's not important. These little guys grew on me and the one thing I want to give them are tools to maneuver through an unfair, unsympathetic, confusing world.

I write because it's not an exaggeration to say they saved me. I call them my little heroes. I knew it would never be fair for a human being to inherit my issues, but I did need 'new life' to remind me of the one the world tried to beat out of me. I did find myself and it wasn't just through me. It was all the things they helped me see-- family/friends, writing, drawing, music. I didn't need to 'have kids' to learn to look ahead. I just needed to open myself to the 'other' things.

When a Line is Open to Scrutiny

"Always remember, someone's effort is a reflection of their interest in you."

You see those one-liner quotes all the time that SCREAM 'guilt trip' everywhere these days. You instantly realize there's no way to offer a rebuttal outside of a lengthy objection.

So from the first, this quote ignores the reality of 'obligation.' It's difficult, if not impossible, to fit in every priority in your life into a day, of course. Sometimes it's hard to fit anything in for months. Your obligations are your efforts, first and foremost. Some relationships take extra steps, extra time, and not remembering to check in on people just isn't a mark of their value in your life.

As a writer and artist, my days are gobbled quick. I have certain 'routines' that I go to the effort of keeping up. When I hear my nephews awake in the morning (usually the sound of a keyboard or a bathroom door), I get up and poke my head around the corner with a cheerful 'good morning'. Breaks are often those times where I wander away from my work to eat, catch a nap, research something I feel my knowledge is weak on, poke my head around a door to see if my nephews want to talk or eat a meal with me. I love them and they are a priority, but there won't be many 'fun days' because the greater effort pulls me away from critical points in the process.

"It only take a few seconds to text 'hi'." Psh, you don't know a writer very well. My 'texts' are rarely less than a paragraph. And I'm a 3 AM kind of thinker sometimes, so you tell me how most people feel about a 'hi' at 3 AM with their notification volume still high.

My 'interest' in you is always something I will meet halfway. I let my friends kidnap me with zero notice and largely because I have the 'every three months' kind of friends. We're adults-- jobs, obligations, and I can tell you that a 'lack of effort' creates an 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' situation to the max. So I have to wonder, when I see a statement that needy, what are the expectations? Is there a demand for more time (which we'd all love to have) or a need to be entertained? No, I don't know what it is, but it certainly doesn't speak for people who have realized that chasing a dream requires sacrifice to things like a social life or a presence.

Admittedly, I am the person that doesn't contact first. I do feel some guilt about that, but there is also the humility of not rubbing it in people's faces that flexibility is something I get to enjoy at this stage in my life. My friends often have scheduled jobs, children (that understandably come first), and obligations I endeavor not to add additional pressure to with my own interest in them. However, this 'flexibility' is given the myth of a 'free' lifestyle when there is very little freedom in the pressure to be accountable to your work and yourself. Facing the same attitudes when I did college online, let me strengthen this concept for you. When I started college, I made a note of about 30 names that I saw consistently start and move through the courses with me. One or two started disappearing after months at a time. When I graduated after two years? Three names. I was also a consistently top scoring student and the C students were often baffled that the course minimum requirements of 2-3 hours a day plus 'doing all the work' made them average students. Even with a part-time job, I was putting in at least 6-8 hours of time towards my daily projects. Flexibility is not something casual attitudes will handle with success because many people go into it with the attitude that it will be 'easy'. What it means is, that instead of the standard full time job of 8 hours a day, I can home in on those 3 hour productivity bursts spread through at least three periods throughout my 24 hour day, to maximize the output and... to sacrifice 'days off' or even 'relaxing evenings'.

So no, effort is not the result of interest. I often start working with a lack of interest, just the energy and the understanding that momentum builds from a starting point so I can't always do what needs to be done with a full tank of enthusiasm. I often take small pleasure in finding what the people I am interested in are doing by passively browsing their social media, making a comment here and there. I always have interest for them and even a longing to see them, but it's also precious to me when we just happen to run into each other and we're free.

Right now, I'm not. I greet my nephews, who most of the time have me and only me around, but I am also a passive constant until they feel a spontaneous, low-effort urge to poke their head around my door. Drafting 160K words was something I knew would bite into a couple of weeks of focus. That's not to say people can't stop by, but it's not the time of luxuries where a 'hi' is good to go in becoming a four hour long chat session or a plan is organic to what I need to do first. I might even be quieter than usual because my brain will keep going to my work (that I can't talk about and have make any sense) or... I'll babble on some nonsensical inspiration, completely excited that I've found something to talk about. I'm at peace with this place-- forward-moving and interesting. However, 'effort' outside of it is a passing thought, a poke around the door into your life and a step back into the things I know I can't put off without regret.

Of course, I don't want my friends to feel like they are the only ones putting in all of the effort, but if they make me a priority, I give them the benefit of my best return effort. This is where I'm at. And maybe I'm a little dreamy, hoping for a day when I can be the one sailing into people's lives to whisk them away on adventures, but in the meantime, you're forewarned. This is what I need to do now. And what if there's no tomorrow? Sorry, I'm just not big on YOLO philosophies or the idea that you have to cling to people for fear of not having those guarantees.

Before my mom passed away, I got to spend one amazing day with her in the sunshine, give her her birthday present early, a skull bracelet I crocheted. When she was admitted to the hospital, I got that bracelet back when I left with a bag of her things the day she left her body behind. My last day with  her was spontaneous, devoid of the fears of what might come and I wouldn't have it any other way. I don't go through life wondering what my last memory will be of you nor what yours might be of me. The last two years of her life, effort amounted to a message from her asking if I wanted to come over, me saying yes, us watching game shows and talking about our lives-- the books I was writing, things we read in a magazine article, hilarious commercials from the 1920s. Never once did she guilt me about effort or entertainment or availability. As much as her and I have put each other through, I lost my soulmate when I lost her. It's impossible to tell me that any relationship worthwhile requires enormous effort. Perhaps I am perpetually single because compromise just doesn't fit into my priorities though. Work, mastery, skill requires effort. Relationships are where your heart goes to breathe and will always work best when done naturally.

Also, don't guilt your loved ones with cheap memes. Pour your heart out to their face. It denotes a lack of courage and a lack of creativity to do otherwise. I don't know who that quote was made for when I saw it(not for me, but I could take a guess) but I guarantee if you care that much, you're going about it the wrong way. Unless resentment and misery is the aim. Then you're just being toxic.

Annnnnd if you ever wonder WHY writers are verbose, it's because we know that even a well-thought out work leaves room for interpretation. We just endeavor to close up the gaps a bit more each time. It's a process.

Coming Together: Love/Hate in Writing

There are some things I'm convinced only another writer will understand. I don't mean anything so elite as whether or not you're published, whether you write short stories or enormous series-- nothing along those lines. Here, I mean the sometimes baffling mix of loving your story and hating it when it didn't just magically change on its own.

Even casual or hobbyist writers can relate. Like a lot of grade schoolers did, I kept a diary. I wasn't one of those daily writers and still don't adhere to that strictly, but I'd attempt to not just recount the 'big events' of my life (like every human being I had a crush on) but also thrown in ideas, stories, poems and drawings. (Any attempt to keep an official sketchbook or diary usually resulted in having many lined or unlined sketchbook/diaries.) In the moment, I can always remember being in love with what I was writing, then cringing at it later.

Getting a little closer to what I'm aiming at, but not quite there yet. Writing changed for me over time. The passion I speak of isn't like the idolatry of my hobbyist days. Drafting is often anxious work for me now, wondering if my mishmash of ideas is going to make sense in the medium I decide for it. The love/hate of writing becomes a culmination of work and play-- needing the focus of work but the fingerpaint of play, the brush of whimsy. Because of that struggle, going back to edit can be paralytic in theory, something I need to just DO and screw thinking about when or if I'm 'ready'.

It's inevitable that I always forget my ideas rock. Humility is my usual stance, but when I start reading, I end up getting sucked into it quickly, even experiencing the magic anew like a first time reader of my own work. It's because of that that I edit it so many times-- I sometimes forget I'm there to rake it and exact change upon it, that I'm not the reader, damn it! The thing is, I keep asking myself 'when did this happen?' When did my history of doubt make me this person that does it anyway, continuously doubting throughout, no matter how many times I'm drawn in.

Because with the pride I have in what I write while reading it, it's not humility to say that I often expect it to be horrible. And why? It doesn't make sense. One of my survival techniques in life has made it imperative that I get damn good at self-entertainment, so why? Better yet, do I ever want that to change? In many ways, it's this idea that I suck that makes me labor to, well, not suck. I can say for certain that self-deprecation is no way to live, but if it isn't terminally paralytic, is it necessarily bad? When I'm pissed at my health issues or dissatisfied with my work, doesn't it make me exercise more, mind my diet, work until I start getting things right?

Used as an excuse for wallowing in self-pity, get rid of it. One thing that never worked for me was looking for people to be miserable with, to be defined or identified by disability. Pffft, outta here with that. While I can find comfort in knowing I'm not alone, I'm more drawn to people that pioneer what can be done when people (and even themselves) say it can't be done. Again, one of my favorite quotes comes back: The people that say something can't be done should get out of the way of the ones doing it.

Sometimes as an exercise, I do a love/hate marking system. Each time I read through something I'll write love or hate on the part I feel more strongly about, on a fresh copy each time so I can't be influenced by the love/hate of a different readthrough. I use these emotional temperatures on multiple edits combined to see if there's a consistent vibe. Something loved a lot might be looked at more critically and something I hate may actually be pretty awesome.

I know I have a lot of these personal exercises and if you think I do all of them for each and every story, you're talking madness. No, I don't do that, but on occasion I come up with ideas like this to get a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses because repetitive procedure is also madness. If you find that your love/hate gauge is throwing you off, it may be a good exercise to try. The idea is always to push you past the parts where you're stalling. Believe me, when I hit those walls, I'm likely reading your writing blogs to sail over my writing humps too.

Sharing is carrrrring... (Ask my dear friend Emily how creepy I can make that sentiment sometimes, but I promise it's also uplifting and hilarious.)

Article Hopping

Every once in a while I flick around through articles on writing, a little ritual I enjoy from time to time. I'm never expecting an epiphany, but I do tend to notice thought trends. What can I agree or disagree with, what can I test or try. You've probably hit on a few of these because it's super tempting to write on a point you've read and dissect it for yourself. Annnnd that's what I'm about to do.

Read a lot, write a lot= better writer. It used to be an insistence to study the 'masters' for what you wish to write. However, it's becoming more and more noticed that those masters don't actually need to be novelists or  bloggers or those obvious choices.The general consensus is now leaning towards the idea that you must be a conscious consumer. Take note of the structure of shows and movies that move and interest you. Find the best way to take the product of a writer and translate it into what works best in the reading/writing experience. Be mindful of the medium you are working in, be mindful of how OTHER things influence them. I would never aim to divert writers from supporting writers by reading books, but only be aware that to hook certain readers, sometimes you might need to be 'more' than a novelist.

Patience is a buzz word lately. One article talked about how so many creatives' dreams involves the Big Break. That the length of our patience is often dictated by how long we are willing to wait for that magic moment. There are a lot of angles around this one: writers offering the 'hard truth' that not everyone 'makes it' or else everyone would do it. Some just offer the optimism that as long as you love what you do, a Big Break is only a bonus to the joy of doing it. I don't know about you but I'm mixed on this one. Do we ever do anything purely out of passion? Are we really okay with being a tragic story of failure when it never pans out? Some days I'm certain I'm doing this because I simply can't imagine not doing it. Some days, I do get a little wistful with the idea of it being a sustainable living. Is it somehow less to not choose one, to kind of sit in the middle of this? One thing I try not to focus on is time. You can't say to yourself "I've been doing it for this long, and nothing, so maybe it's time to quit." If you're truly not enjoying it, even loathing it, I'd agree with you. I've been there with many things I've tried and it never gets better as long as that attitude persists. However, if you're comparing it to the success of others, disabuse yourself of that. It's not a mark of your ability or future success. Can't emphasize enough that, as with most things in life, hard work helps, luck is the big dumb decider. You might have to change tact, on many aspects of your work and marketing, to reach the right people the right way. I wouldn't demean someone else's talent or work, but hey, some people are also hit with a ridiculous stroke of luck.

Consumer vs. Creator. My nephew Thomas actually brought this one up. He lamented that we've reached an age where it's impossible to consume all that you really want to in your lifetime, that you'll have to miss certain things due to the sheer volume and even dedicating yourself to it 24-7 with as much efficiency as possible, you'll miss out on something. (I actually argued that I LOVE this-- that we can learn to be selective, to reward artists that are putting in greater effort rather than just always consume what is widely available or popular.) Creatives often find this balance frustrating though. How much should I consume? How much consuming is procrastination to creation? I've seen many creatives lament that they're playing video games when they should be creating-- but should they? One thing that is apparent is that downtime is important to productivity and that even certain downtime activities align with the sort of processes that actually strengthen our work. So how can we be certain we're doing enough of either? Well, you can't. I can offer my experience with health issues here and say that you can eat all the right things and exercise your ass off and you'll still have fuck-all to show for it. Even when you're sure you're doing enough, sometimes the results or the output just isn't going to be cause to celebrate or congratulate yourself. Sometimes you just have to adjust and know that you're doing what you can. There's a lot of guilt and doubt and self-criticism in creativity and yeah, you might be procrastinating. So do something about it.

And yes! I DO blog to procrastinate! But I also blog as a warm-up to actual writing. It's easy to excuse helpful downtime as 'being lazy' or 'procrastinating' because we're also living in a fucked-up time where people seem to think that bragging about anything other than hard work and misery makes you a shitty human being. Someone else is struggling so how dare you enjoy anything?! Eh, you have to take that in stride too. I mean, people, they're not really all that bad. Some of my favorite parts of life involve some great people. However, even someone you like can slip into societal droning and start to drill you about responsibility and hard work when in truth, you've been biting the bullet about just how hard it is. It's just not trendy for creatives to be brooding and depressed anymore, so we get damn good at making it look easy. Well, yeah. Not a single person is going to be curious about our work if the act of doing it makes us a total shit to be around.

Again, take everything in stride. I've become quite used to writers being supportive one minute then needing to ignore you the next. I don't take it personally because we have to go through phases to grow, not just for our work but for our own doubts, successes and struggles. I don't demand anything-- it's a crazy process. It's my wish to be able to support other writers someday, but I'm also broke and spamming social media on someone else's behalf-- it's not helping either of us. I'll get to that point, not because it's guaranteed, but because I just don't see myself doing anything else. Even if the possibility exists that 20 years from now, I'm still invisible, it just doesn't faze me. I'm proud I'm about to release my tenth book. I'm psyched that my 11th is coming along great. I'm grateful I have five other writing projects to throw words and ideas at and I'm excited that drawing is a part of my body of work too. I spent a pretty miserable decade trying to be an 'adult' but I had no energy to do what I loved. 

If I can add anything more, do this (whatever this is) because you feel alive when you do. If doing anything else is an existence, it's not admirable-- I'm sorry to tell you it's just not. People may not admire you for what they are certain is just 'doodling' or 'journaling' (and all creatives get shit on there, so no, it's not just you), but if you feel good about yourself, you're much more useful to this world than doing the 'right thing' will get you. See, because the 'right thing' is something you ultimately decide. If the right thing for you doesn't match up to what other people think, it's okay as long as you can live with it. It doesn't matter what people think about your situation. It doesn't matter if they think you're lucky or that you should be grateful. It's okay to want more and still enjoy where you are. And I know you don't need my permission, but sometimes you just need someone to say the same things you are. Like a mantra, another voice can lend to self-empowerment. You can still disagree and cherry pick what works for you, of course. Don't know about you, but writing is one place I endeavor to never shut the hell up. Did a lot of that in the past-- won't waste another second doing it in the future.

Okay, maybe a few seconds. For the sake of downtime and creation both.

Why You Go Ahead and Publish

You've completed your novel! No mean feat! For first timers, it feels like it's in the bag, so you start looking for the lucky agent/publisher who has the opportunity of a lifetime to cash in on your bestseller.

High as a kite on aspiration, your fingers float over the keyboard. You type something to the effect of 'publishing' into that search bar.

Huh, editing... Well, I guess I did that. I ran spell checker after every chapter for sure! Professional? Yikes, how about self-editing? Ouch, steep curve... No wonder some people pay someone else.

Formatting... (And you thought editing was a curve...)

Beta readers? Can I trust my precious to just anyone? If I like it, someone else will, right? No guaranteed feedback. Should I get an NDA? 

Brain freeze! Wait, I'm drinking hot coffee...

Let's suppose you get past the intimidation of the basics. You formatted, edited, read it to the point where there's nothing left to nitpick. Still, something just never feels right. You find a misspelled word in the first chapter--ugh, it's ruined. You edit again-- ugh, you hate that dialogue, that character, why did you give that a pass? You dismantle, you rearrange, you rewrite.

Guess what? You're probably ready. For what, I can't say. If you don't have the confidence yet to put a value on it, you have to know that most authors,,even best selling ones, never love their work when they took the leap of faith and never looked at it since. They often need fans to even help them revive the memory of it.

Wait, shouldn't they know it like the back of their hand? Funny how accurate that saying is. Try drawing the back of your hand from memory. No peeking. Even when I tell you to draw it while looking, you'll probably look constantly as you do. Let's say you have a photographic memory or you truly memorized the back of your hand because you're kind of an asshole (don't worry; I've done it just to debunk an argument too). The recall of even a pristine memory is often very clinical, devoid of emotion in order to exact perfect recall of the visual. Something gives. Your mood, your confidence, your nerve, your dog ate your hard drive, what novel? The point is, your novel is not sentient. Although I would love to see you write a book to that effect, you're probably looking for an out that isn't really rational.

Name any famous author. Their work is shit. What about--? Yup, them too. Because any famous author is just not someone else's favorite. There is no universally beloved author. None that come close even have an entire don't of work that can do no wrong. They've cashed in on their fame, become hated on Twitter... Well, you would trade in fame for a small, loving fan base anyway. Ooo, you want a hugbox? Do you think trolls are less evil when they find you? Oh ho ho, no no no no...

I'm not here to frighten you away from this. To make fans and friends, the work has to get out there and that means trolls and assholes too. You'll get passive aggressives that insinuate how similar your work is to someone else (coughripoffcough) too. Oh, give you a troll over the crusty grey assholes any day. 

Just ask yourself if you're ever going to burn this manuscript or if you'll pine over the what-ifs. Ask yourself if you're truly a storyteller or just a rabid fanchild. 

Why do you publish? Because you know its value. Because you're ready. Because you have more stories to tell and this one is just the beginning of a pattern of completion you're setting. I can't give you that answer, but in this day and age, with all that's available to you?

Because you fucking can.

You can also pull it, learn from it, grow from it. This is for YOU to decide. Scary, wonderful, terrible, terrific, yours.

It Be the Time of the Updates!

Mentioned this before, but because of the plots in my current WIP, I've had to run at least cursory factual edits following each Part of this projected three-part book. I roughly knew what each part would entail from the onset, but even with planning, I kept a pantser mentality-- which often meant fiddling with details that I liked better as the ideas presented themselves along the way.

That being said, yesterday, I finished the run-through on Parts I and II, where I'm currently drafted to. I'm not planning on jumping right back into writing so I'll be taking a short "break" of indeterminate length. I took some great notes to look out for when I'm starting up this conclusive third part, but there are a few parts I had to mark because they were based on my memory of events in UnNamed. I do not trust my memory to be 100% so I'm going to be reading UnNamed before going back into my third draft. 

Why? Well, I published UnNamed back in February (on my mother's birthday to be exact) and it's July. In those five months, I did about 6 or 7 book covers projects, some odd number of art projects besides that-- juggling those things made it necessary to reread much of UnSung's progress even, just to be sure I was still recalling events as well as the characters would (or rather better, because I'm pretty much the Almighty of Almighties where their development is concerned). Sometimes even notes miss out on the subtleties and it's completely useless to try to create emotional or dialogue shortcut devices or notes. You have to creep over those moments in the raw, test them over and over fully, to see if they're still working for the story.

In any case, UnSung Part 3 drafting will be my next hunker-down project. In the interim, I'm going to play peasant/house-elf and get some cleaning and organizing done. The subsequent scheduled post, another cover reveal, ought to tell you why. If you didn't get to it, my birthday and the release of the final(?) book in my first series coincide a week from today and not only do I intend to enjoy the week ahead fully, but I intend to jump into more summer project fun without having any excuse for distraction. Fully cleaned fish tank, dusting, vacuuming, the Wiping of the Surfaces, making sure all things I will need for my projects are readily accessible (notebooks, clean fast computer, pencils, pens, drawing tablets-- you know, my tools of the trade).

Rituals can be cathartic towards the anxiety of beginning new things. Or, continuing old things, which is what I remind myself if I get the beginner jitters. I call it Domestic Tetris, the stacking, organizing, brain-engaging act that doesn't separate me from the Plotting Tetris I'm lining up for. Because, let's face it, a very involved process can leave us a little forgetful for the domestic parts of life. You just don't really notice those dishes or clothes piling up with your heads engaged elsewhere. 

Not that it ever gets terrible. Keep in mind, I'm raising two boys so there's only so much I can get away with falling into any task uninterrupted. They're old enough now that they actually get what goes into my work and they're mostly very considerate of giving me ample time to do it. They're still kids though and they need things and in truth, I like the time they want to spend with me too. Just as much as wanting to know when they're hungry or sick or need help, I also want to hear what they think about and are interested in. Many times, they've inspired my own ideas in some way too.

Leaving the post at that. Finished one thing, taking a break to better tackle the next things ahead. I do have some short comic ideas in my head and the web comic idea still nagging for my attention, so I might do a bit of that here and there too. Really no use making plans where I'm concerned. Creatively, either I'm in or I'm out and there's not really much compromise when it comes to my attention. I can force it a bit, but as a rule, if I can't get my head in it within 15 minutes, I'm just wasting my time. I'm more likely to sabotage my own work and end up running some frustrating damage control. So it will be what it will be and hopefully, I can share some more interesting work with you once I've latched on enough to bring something to completion. Having a great track record with it so far.

Order, Please!

After writing the Editing Paradox post, I've thought about chronology. A lot. Because I'm not a chronological writer. At all. I do like to use flashbacks, back stories, and the ebb and flow methods of storytelling. Namely because it is the best way to keep telling a story and not resort to several pages of a character explaining a pivotal moment of the past. Even though I have used dialogue to explain things, I also use the sometimes incorrect assumptions of the character that often prove false or even dangerous. Forward moving editing and ebb/flow writing-- these two methods play well together.

I realize while writing UnSung that the fourth book is actually filling up faster than the very bare third, which is cause for concern. Will the third book's theme be unnecessary when the fourth is just so tempting? Right now, it feels unbalanced, but I can also say for certain that most of the best parts of any of my books don't come from the outlines at all. Then again, looking at the first and second books, the second has become a much heavier pursuit. 

I wrote UnNamed thinking I might want a more traditional publishing deal so I made it as light on the word count as possible. While it certainly didn't hurt it, I felt a whole other sense of freedom doing away with the feels of agents or publishers and just writing the story UnSung needs to be. I edit and realize even now that this very epic story grows in word counts little by little. I cut and rearrange but then I'm adding three more paragraphs where I know a connection needs to be made. I'm not crying or feeling like anything is too precious-- I'm brutal, but there's always a little more. As I've said before, this is a story where I don't want the reader to feel any presence is only there for the benefit of the main characters or even the story. If I drag you through it, I need to feel there's a damn good reason to put it there, be it violence, sex, or the unwashed armpits of vendors (I'm not actually writing that, but if it works, you're probably getting a whiff of the world for yourself).

It's the planning, Gods hamlet!, that often throws off the growth, just as much as it helps. Themes are very important to where this story unfolds. It just so happens that right now, so many things are fitting into the far-away fourth. The second book didn't start showing its true colors until the third part of UnNamed and the epilogue leading into it was born. Already, I've begun the epilogue into the third so, by all accounts, I'm ahead of where I was by comparison. Okay, if the numbers game is throwing you off, then let's just say that planning too far ahead just starts to feel like you're building a floor above a floor you haven't built yet. You start to seriously consider if you're going to cramp yourself in. Remember the half floor on Being John Malkovich? Yeah, like that.

Methinks I worry too much because the third book excites me too, maybe because I know its promise. I can plan the fourth all I want, but just like my editing rule stands, I don't touch the actual writing of a future book in a series until I've at least fully drafted the one I'm working on. When I look at my initial notes for UnSung, I have to laugh at how very much I deviated from the maybes and was always glad I did. So let the planning nets get fat with fish-- I can always throw them back.

As long as I've been at this, I still feel like a 'new writer'. I still wonder if I've bitten off more than I can chew; I still end up choking it down and sticking out my tongue to show I've swallowed it too. I'm going to insist on order then pave my room with Post-Its. I will demand order then scramble to redefine order. Life's best decisions aren't always on the menu. I'm making the menu here. 

Doubts are going to be a part of any process. Have you ever gone through a process doubt-free and had a total oh-shit moment because there's no way in hell you didn't make a mess of something somewhere? I often write when I think my writing might be shit because objectively I can take comfort in being right. I don't have the same trepidation I might have when I was absolutely in love with my writing when I wrote it. I cringe at the thought of reading it already so it's never quite as bad as I think it will be. Oh, it's not good, but I'm also not afraid of knocking myself off a pedestal. I was just fully prepared to not treat it as precious so I attacked it as such.

With everything I feel particularly confident about it, I need to make it a bit wobbly. I need to put it to fire against other methods. It's quite possible to make a mess that will be hell to fix. I've definitely made messes of stories that even had to be put aside for years before I'd go after them again, if at all. I certainly don't have a name that makes my shit smell like roses. Yet. But I guarantee that my trials by fire are teaching me how to make my writing bulletproof. It's not the sort of thing that will ever make me feel qualified to tell anyone else how to write. It will not guarantee that every household will have one of my books in it. It's more like finding a tailor that makes my ass look better than a store-made pair of pants ever could. My tailor might not flatter your ass either. Maybe no tailors can and we just learn how to sew our own clothes.

I hate this analogy. My nemesis is a sewing machine. That's why I'm writing books, not making clothes. Can't be good at everything. Drawing, design, crochet, playing instruments, I think I've been given aptitude enough elsewhere. Sewing machines and juggling-- not my strong suits. That fear exists too; oh god, what if I'm one of those American Idol contestants that is tone-deaf and completely delusional about their talent? Well, it's a valid fear. Does a hobby need to be your only calling? Have you sunk years into something and worried that you don't have a marketable skill to show for it? Yeah, it happens. But there are also people that take a 180 on their careers. Hell, some dizzy 540s in there too. Some people do need to gain perspective or even start from square one. 

Heh, and a post about order often defies it. But blogs are a fun place to engage people in a dumping ground of honest thought processes. Regardless of where your journey takes you, back off of your prediction of the 'end game' for all of your pursuits in writing. I haven't yet had one that fit a mold, a big reason that I've found it so important to surrender any expectations. I don't try to eliminate worry, just vocalize it. If I'm struggling with a process, it's a sign I'm still in the game. If I ever became complacent, I'd probably just wander off when it gets difficult. Like I said, it never feels like a proper effort if it's not full of oh-shit moments.

What Draws You to Story Telling?

I might have said this before, but there are certain phrases I stopped saying when I realized it was true of all creatives. "I've been drawing/writing every since I could hold a pencil." "My inspiration is Disney and anime." "I'm a flexible person/critical thinker/problem solver." "I'm highly motivated and a fast learner." You know what I mean-- the stuff that now shows up on every résumé or social media description out there. What is left when the really honest, creative, and original thoughts are old hat?

The same can be said of storytelling and there are the same platitudes whenever a new writer worries their idea has been done before. "Make an idea your own." "You have a unique voice/style." "If it's interesting enough, people won't mind the similarities." "If it works, it doesn't matter." Not that these aren't all true in parts, but I feel like a lot of those worries need a more personal approach.

First off, most worries are almost always presented in a way that is infuriatingly general. As I've gone into before, Quora questions and the initial state of an emotion tend to be a dump on impulse that needs direction to isolate. When someone asks "what if my idea has been done before?" it gets pulled in a lot of directions:

• Asking them to explain their idea
• A slew of general suggestions
• Frustration or outright trolling
• Hug-box nonsense

To name a few. Ultimately, noise, well-intentions or no. However, the more I observe the interactions, the more I wonder why no one is asking the person what makes them ask that. Are they reading a lot of books in the genre or none at all? Are they worried their fandom will make it more fanfic than original work? Are they basing it off of something and just hoping no one will notice? In order to alleviate this kind of fear, sometimes I think we need to ask the right questions and that the asker has to be comfortable with answering them so they can be directed towards a mindset that might benefit them.

Of course, no one owes a writer a story. I understand that some writers are wary of how much they are 'helping' someone write their story when sometimes it becomes clear that someone who isn't actually writing anything is actually just harvesting and picking other brains. I don't think this is the case most of the time, but rather than getting to their idea, the wary writer can instead dig into what methods that writer is using, never needing to discuss ideas at all.

Going back to the questions: what are they reading? I know there's this huge consensus that to be a better writer, you have to be a better reader. However, a great deal of doubts can arise from reading too heavily in your genre, worrying you're gleaning your ideas from these books, or of course, just have no idea what's happening in the genre at all and want to avoid writing into an unpopular or even overdone trope or cliché. Some solutions might be:

• Reading 'too much' in your genre, too much knowledge and feeling you have nothing new to add: Start reading from other genres, no matter how much you like it. One way to refresh your passion in a genre might actually be to integrate an idea from ANOTHER genre that doesn't get a lot of movement in yours.
• Reading 'too much' in your genre, afraid you're going to unconsciously borrow: This might be unavoidable, but again, if you must read, deviate from the genre and let your most recent influences steer away from the norm. You can also put down the novels and pick up short stories or writing articles, something that will help you focus on craft rather than content.
• Reading 'too little' or nothing at all in your chosen genre: The likelihood of your unique idea being not so unique might be high but uninfluenced, you can honestly plead ignorance or even just concede that a good idea is a good idea and more than one person thinking of it is proof enough. While a binge might be inspirational, sometimes that dry place is one where you'll worry less about WHERE you've read it before because you might not have at all. See what you can do with it.
• OH NO! I've seen my idea done before while searching the internet: Sigh. Don't do this. Ever. Don't go from excited about this idea you came up with to seeing if it's been done. Train yourself not to research that, train yourself not to care. Again, once you read how it's been done, it could cripple you or make you miserable by telling yourself theirs is better. A newborn idea is always generic but give yourself time to grow it, write it, edit it before you ever look for it. Where it's been done, they went through the fully-formed process and you should give your own ideas the same care. Don't see it as a waste if you can't make it work. Critical thinking and problem solving is NEVER a waste of time and you can use and refine those methods for any idea after.
• Wellll, technically it's fanfic with the names changed: Wellll, technically fans are going to call it out. As long as you don't pretend otherwise, you can also add where you deviated. Remember, plagiarism is a percentage and if you can bring enough original content to a clear inspiration, it's valid. You might want to pay an editor and possibly a lawyer to check it if you want to cover your ass against being sued though.

In tackling the source of a general fear, finding the right questions, you're helping yourself too. Develop a plan of action to see social situations as a good place to test your ability to dig into motivations. There's a bubble of safety in the manipulation of your characters, so sometimes you do have to put your theories to the test with actual people, even if it's just internet strangers. I personally don't like using public forums like Quora and social media for this, especially when any personal information is attached to the profile. I make an exception when it comes to closed groups. While large groups can sometimes be an unfiltered risk, you also might feel nervous about approaching people in smaller groups. I'd say it's okay to go anonymous or create a lite or false profile where permissible, but I'd advise against the temptation to troll because of it. In my case, I stick to closed groups. Anonymity just gives me too much temptation to deviate from the purpose of social accountability so I don't do it. When I'm looking to help or understand people, removing the diplomacy of my personal character defeats the point of appealing to someone on the same level.

Cheese and Jesus, I probably sound like a huge nerd again, but if you understood it, I've found my people and that's all that matters. What does discerning personal motivation have to do with story telling? Well, everything so I'll finish that up.

Story telling-- what draws the story teller into telling their stories or the story seekers towards them is this alignment of personal motivation. I suppose you could refine it into a marketing strategy, but let's assume a more traditional stance and just say that those alignments are not only found in ads, commercial popularity, or even word of mouth, but the connection between the writer and the reader. 

At first, it surprised me when the person behind a story I loved seemed to observe the same way I do or made the same comparison. I might have said it out loud once and been laughed at and embarrassed for it, but then a published book says it and suddenly that shutdown becomes validated because I'm not the only one. Sometimes a story can bring us courage and acceptance. And yeah, sometimes we never needed it to keep repeating it even when we're laughed at (I'm both of those people depending on mood) but it still feels good when someone says it like you or even a little better.

Sometimes walking with a writer becoming a storyteller is draw enough. As the writer publishes, either for free or daring to put a price on it, there's the validation that they are eager to stick with this, making people more confident in investing their beloved pastime with them. The hard luck story and the writer that stood in the shadows of the writing world for 10+ years is still a romantic concept for some people, even in these apathetic times. 

Some readers need the whole series to even begin so you might need to put in years and more years besides to even get someone to pick up the first one. Some storytellers don't have the patience so they filter their ideas into essays, short stories, novellas or single novels to offer a fully finished bit of their work in smaller bursts.

Story telling is about intimacy with the work, which can get uncomfortable on most sides. It takes strength in all parties to take chances. What draws most of us to trying new stories is the search for that resonance, that connection. It doesn't have to be deep or profound-- it can be horny and violent, but it's connecting regardless.

Do You Even Bracket, Bro?

One thing I provide as a public service is my ability to butcher popular slang and quotes on the regular. However, my cringe-worthy post heading has another purpose: utilizing all those little keys that aren't as worn on my silicone keyboard cover.

Not talking hot key shortcuts, function keys, the arrow keys or even the poor redundant Tab key that fell out of use when word processor formatting favored auto indents. Nope, I'm talking... *whomp whomp* brackets. I guess there's no mystery there...

It seems to be a personal mission to torment myself with making certain challenges towards communicating my ideas. UnNamed was about the concealment of names mostly (and the creative use of pronouns and descriptors in absence of names) and UnSung is no exception.

Aiden is mute. I am not. I don't pretend to know what it's like to be so this was not a book based on an issue I can relate to. However, I do know what it's like to desire to communicate or the exhaustion of that effort leading to isolation. In Aiden's case, he finds that his own efforts do not go unrewarded. He greets all of those moments of breakthrough with exuberance. He finds two unique ways to communicate with two of the women in his life, one through a language he created through music, one through a magical link.

Before I go into what this has to do with brackets, this wasn't an attempt to mask a disability with a superpower. That's not what this is, since the two people still aren't going to afford him the same sort of 'voice' that people who can speak have. Aiden still finds the limitations of these 'break-through' abilities and still endures the frustration of having to depend on someone's ability to want to understand him at all. As a point of reference, my granddad turns off his hearing aid when my grandma starts arguing with him, causing her hurt, frustration, rage and impotence with communicating-- that he can just 'turn off' when it doesn't suit him is always a one-sided solution that never benefits her. It would be like learning ASL to debate with a deaf person, then closing your eyes or looking away when you're done. It's worse than hanging up the phone on someone because you are right there still, negating someone with an advantage they can't use.

So, brackets. When Aiden uses his language, I knew I wanted to deviate from just italics. While his 'thoughts' are still italicized, italics are also easy to miss when spread out in a conversation and since he is speaking through these thoughts, it deserved something as important as a quote. Not these ( ). No, parentheses are a side note, often serving the purpose of injecting a secondary idea. Not these guys either { }. I'm never quite sure where those brackets are used but they're too busy. Quotation marks are clean and quick so I wanted Aiden's voice to have a similar simplicity. I dug these guys out from my high school days: ⎡⎦

Yes! L brackets! These remind me of the ¡! deal you get with exclamations in español. As you can tell, I know my way around the optional symbols on a keyboard. Other favorites are © ™ and … Yes, yes, you can make an ellipsis with Option + : (colon) on a Mac (because three periods are more work than two simultaneously pressed keys maybe). Here's the thing-- I also have to make sure that the choose-your-own-font capabilities of an ebook doesn't warp my precious L brackets into some OTHER bracket or worse-- the 404 equivalent of character nullification: the random wing-ding symbol. And no, I don't have that stupid rectangle's hot key combo memorized. I'm rather partial to this choice so I will conduct ridiculous amounts of research to make it happen.

I suppose it would be my designer training that makes me so enthusiastic about utilizing fonts to communicate effectively in a novel. No matter how complex my ideas are in planning, I always stand by the mission to deliver these ideas with all of those complexities combed smooth for sharing. I'm not going to be using ASCII art (although you should do yourself a favor and see how awesome this endeavor is), but I do work to be sure that my punctuation and style choices are the best choice possible.

Even if you don't use special characters outside of the basic set in the body of your writing itself, I bet that many people, from time to time still end up pulling one of these: 

--~~{@ TITLE @}~~--

You can't deny that a nice little bit of dressing for those headers isn't at least a little bit tempting. There use to be some serious excitement when you told people those look like roses. That was before the excitement of using eggplant emojis as penises. It's okay if you don't remember...

 And that's what matters most.

Vanity Post!

Blog posting is largely a place I can go to take a break from my stories. When you spend 8+ hours a day writing, sometimes the last thing a writer wants to write about is writing.

Vanity posting seems like a fun diversion, so why not? I've done a post on the basic of crochet and if you dig around you can find some of my side projects floating around, but I'll throw some here and talk about them a little.

 

First up, a blanket I made for my Mommom (grandmother) for Christmas a few years back. Using a series of patterns and stitches, I designed this blanket especially for her. Seemed like the proper thing to do since she was the one that taught me basic crochet when I was 16.

 Ah, the dragon neckwarmers... Advanced amigurumi (crochet sculpting) 101. 6 of the maybe 10 I've made; very popular. I've had requests to do a tutorial video on the wings and snouts since I designed the wings myself and the snouts are the hardest part of the pattern for a lot of people. I'm not a vlog kind of person, but I may do it in the future.

 Yup, that's the slime from Dragon Quest, for those that were asking. This is actually made as a hat but holds up well even when it's not on a head. Another one I designed after making a Hershey kiss hat and the shape reminded me of this so I adjusted it.

 Dresses are one of the most time consuming. Even doll dresses take 3-6 weeks if you work on them at least 8 hours a day. Hell on your hands if you don't take breaks either. This is a 100% cotton beach cover-up.

 Another popular one, the Galactic Shawl, a Red Heart pattern. Noticing the stars in a night sky shapes, I used silver and black yarn to make the shapes really stand out.

 Again, for my gamer friends, yup, it's a Moogle! I used armature wire to create the little head bauble. Didn't use a pattern, but it would be easy to duplicate. I'd do the eyes and nose a bit differently too (stuffing the nose and bringing the eyes in closer, for one).

Eh, I have a ton of doll outfits I did, but no decent pics of all of them. I'll have to do a little photo shoot and come back to it...

Thanks for being my break between the wonderful world of editing! Not that I don't love revisiting my story, but this is the part that amounts to running through it with a chainsaw so it can get the anxiety going a bit.

Not that it's not terribly fun running around with a chainsaw, but this is the place where I make sure I'm not treating my stories like they're too precious for change. I'm not sure I was ever an overprotective sort of writer (I've thrown away ridiculous amounts of my old stories without thinking twice and from what I can remember, it's for the best). Until I wrote the first book of The Truth about Heroes trilogy, there were few things that even made it to halfway finished. I did have one story I had been calling Tiger Eye that got a decent roster of characters, a hand drawn map with a few locations, and a decent beginning, but every time I got stuck I'd throw in a new character and eventually it just became a story with a chain of characters that never came up again. I might salvage it-- it's a story I started when I was 15 so it would need a total makeover, but I still have the sketches in a green binder. I don't know if I'll be inspired to go back to it, but I left it as a possibility. Castles in the Sand, Purple Moon, and The Curse of Amanita were comics that filled a notebook or two; my friend Liz and I also did one called the Legend of Nibichi that I still have just the script for, but not the comic. I have Son of a Devil, but that one is probably the most recent too. Still remember them well, but they were among the many that were lost to time. If I had a time machine, I'd go back and save all of my drawing notebooks from thieves and forgetfulness.

So much for not talking about writing, but there are few things more tempting than going back to what you love even when it frustrates you. Or maybe especially when it frustrates you, because the tug-of-war is sometimes the right kind of drama for the task. It still stings a little that I lost so much of the work I did in the past, not because I would publish them even if I had them, but I wouldn't mind redrawing and reworking them from more than my spotty memory. It still might be fun to go back to a lot of them, but I'm almost moving forward with new ideas and that feels better than nostalgia right now. The ideas just keep coming and I'm going to keep encouraging myself in that direction.