See, I had fun writing it.  I was writing something which was entirely up my alley and doing so in a tone and voice which come very, very naturally to me.  I’ve spent so much time trying to write things I didn’t especially enjoy writing because those things were The Things Writers Write — I’m mainly talking about fiction here, in all its forms and genres.  But what the last month’s worth of updates on this site and the writing of that article last night have taught me reminded me is that I’m not a fiction writer.  I can do it, and occasionally do it relatively well, and I’ll probably do it again at some point, but…it’s not My Thing.

Writing about pop culture?  Totally My Thing.  Effortless, in that way that the work comes to you easily when you’re doing what you’re meant to be doing — where even the hard work doesn’t really feel like work, you know?

The sad thing is that this isn’t the first time I’ve come to this conclusion.  Presented below is my post from the last time I realized this was true, way back in October 2005 (so excuse, please, the dated pop-culture references).  I’m reposting/updating it here mainly as a waypoint for myself so that hopefully I don’t get so lost again…and also as ammo for you people to use to kick my ass, if necessary.

Man…feeling that buzz of doing My Thing was nice, I gotta say.

I’ve been thinking quite a lot the last few days about the current quote that’s over there in the sidebar right now. For those of you reading this through an RSS feed, or if you’re reading this entry after the quote’s been changed (or you’re reading it three-and-a-half years after the fact — ed.), here it is:

“It’s a reactive thing, like a Geiger counter; you click whenever you come close to whatever you were built to do.” — Stephen King

That’s a valid analogy. When you’re doing whatever it is that you’re supposed to be doing, you just know. The puzzle pieces in your head click together perfectly, the picture comes into focus, however you want to say it–you get the buzz, the feeling of the internal compasses of your mind and your heart and your actions all finding true north at the same time.

(Incidentally, I think the same is true of the people in your life. I’ve had plenty of friends that I liked perfectly well but never felt that “buzz” about. I tend to think that those friends who do give me that buzz are the people that are supposed to be in my life for some reason. It’s more than just a matter of getting on well with the buzzworthy people; it feels almost karmic to me when it happens. Sometimes the reason I’m supposed to be around that person is obvious, other times not, but I always make sure to notice when it’s there.) Some people discover very early in life the activities which give them that special sense of This Is Right and True; some never find it at all. Some people get close but never quite make that final adjustment necessary to get it.

That last batch of people, I’m pretty sure, includes me.

See, the thing is…in the same way you just know when you’re doing That Thing You Do, you just know when you’re not, or when you’re not quite. In my case, I know I’m supposed to be writing. I’m getting more and more sure of that the more of it I do.

But what am I supposed to be writing? Ah, there’s the rub.

I have a number of writer friends (any number of whom might be reading this–feel free to pipe in, y’all) for whom this particular problem doesn’t ever seem to have surfaced. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if for many of those people, there never was any decision or exploration necessary; they write what they write because that’s what they write. They write what comes naturally. Or so it seems to me…I’d love to hear some feedback about this particular point.

For me, that process of finding what I have to say, of finding the stories that are mine to tell, has been quite a trial. And that trial’s still not done. I’m getting closer, I think, but even on the novel I’m 15,000 words into, that buzz is still elusive. It’s been there in parts; I’ve lightly detected it in those areas where I started to understand my characters and found myself with vision for where the plot was going. But I’m not really not sure writing YA fiction is My Thing. I’m not giving up, not at all, not on this particular book nor on that category of fiction as a whole, but…

I’ve been getting some strong Geiger counter readings from another writing quarter altogether.

The clicks got louder and louder this week as I read a back-and-forth email conversation between two writers I really enjoy, Bill Simmons and Chuck Klosterman. For those of you unfamiliar with the names, Simmons is a columnist for ESPN.com’s Page 2 section and Klosterman is a columnist for, among other places, Spin. Each of them has different specialties–Simmons primarily writes about sports, Klosterman primarily about music–but both have a wonderful appreciation for and understanding of the broader canvas of pop culture. (At this point, any of you who know me very well at all are probably nodding your heads and can see the source of those Geiger readings.)

I read this conversation between Klosterman and Simmons and I very much had that feeling of “getting it.” It wasn’t just a feeling of “I can do this”…it was a feeling of “I should be doing this.” I don’t mean specifically that I should be either a sports columnist or a music columnist, but I should be part of the cultural conversation. I’m inspired by each of those writers, actually, in the way each one weaves in elements of the greater cultural consciousness into their columns. I know that there’s a great many people who dismiss pop culture out-of-hand as lowbrow or not worthy of serious discussion, but neither Simmons nor Klosterman believes that. And neither do I.

Pop culture is American culture, it’s the commonality that allows us to talk to others with whom we might not share race, creed, class, sexuality or gender. Even if I don’t know your or don’t have a lot in common with you, if I discover that we both have an interest in, say, “Gilmore Girls,” then that’s a talking point, somewhere to begin. It’s a bond. Is it a strong bond? Is that shared interest alone enough to sustain a friendship? Or a community?

Surprisingly, it can be–as just one small example, look at the phenomenon surrounding the “Browncoats” who so loudly supported “Firefly” and now Serenity. That’s a fairly large, strong, devoted community (and regionalized series of sub-communities) made up of a diverse set of people whose only real tie is a love for this particular fictional universe. And it’s enough. They frequently arrange social events to bring their members together, frequently (but not always) involving screenings of “Firefly.”

And again, that’s just one relatively tiny example. Look around–how many times do people gather together just because they have a love for some particular aspect of our culture? How many people get together for Dave Matthews Band concerts? For “Lost” viewing parties? For release parties for the newest Harry Potter book? For standing in line for weeks for the newest Star Wars movie? For performances of “Avenue Q” or “Spamalot” on Broadway? Popular culture by its very definition is our culture, it’s everybody’s culture, and that fact alone makes it worthy of discussion, from the most wretched of reality TV shows to Norah Jones’ albums.

Futhermore (lest we forget that this blog is All The Time All About Me), pop culture is an area where I have something to say. Reading Simmons and Klosterman’s conversation struck that chord within my head and my heart that told me: “These are your people. This should be you.” Will writing about pop culture win me any literary prizes? Nope…but it would make me happy.

So what am I gonna do about it? Oh, hell if I know. But when I do, you will, too. Chances are good that it will either involve this site or Moviegeekz. It looks like I have an awful lot of thinking to do over the next couple of days and weeks about just what my goals are going to be, how I’m going to get there…and about the greater cultural impact of Wedding Crashers.

The funny thing (or not so funny thing) is that it’s only been about six weeks since I irrevocably turned my back on writing fiction.  Not so much irrevocable, huh?  I thought I didn’t have any stories in my head or heart worth telling (and truth be told, I’m still not positive on this point), so I told myself (and Terry) that any writing I did was probably going to have to be in the non-fiction/commentary realm, which comes much more easily to me.  (Yes, the implication there is that I’m just lazy.)

Yet here I am, a month later, getting ready for this intensive submersion into words, words, so damn many words.

So my question to myself is:  why?  If writing fiction is something I thought I’d given up on, why subject myself to NaNo?

I’ve had people ask me a couple of times recently about how my writing was going, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell them I’d essentially given up, that I’d decided writing prose wasn’t my thang.  These friends only meant well, of course, and I certainly don’t get upset with people for asking — though I tend to get upset with myself for not having a good answer for them.  I truly feel bad, like I’m letting people down for not using abilities of mine that they’d like to see me use.

But while that’s a small part of my trying it again, it’s far from the main reason I’m doing so.  I feel like I’m letting myself down with this whole “giving up” thing.  I think I’m never going to be able to live with myself if I don’t give writing more of a shot than I have.  The last few Novembers, I’ve been disappointed in myself for not trying it (even when it didn’t make a lot of logistical sense for me to do it.)  And while I don’t think that participating in NaNoWriMo will be the final word for me on writing vs. not writing, and while I’m sure that the result of whatever I do for NaNo won’t be something I can sell, I think it’s important for me to try it, to get back into the habit of writing, to loosen up some of the constrictions I have in my head.

These, then, are my goals for National Novel Writing Month 2008:

• Finish at least 50,000 toward one (relatively) cohesive story. Yes, the 50K words are the overall main goal of NaNo, but the only time I’ve actually “won” NaNo by making that goal, I totally (kinda) cheated:  while I did indeed write 50,000 words during the month of November, my story was actually three unrelated stories — all unfinished.  Twenty thousand words in, I realized I was stuck and completely changed stories; ten thousand words later, I realized that what I was doing sucked through and through and was going nowhere, so I changed again.  I think the first and last bits possibly could have been worth the whole 50,000 words if I’d stuck with them, but munging the three together felt like it was totally in violation of the NaNo spirit.  This time:  one story, though I make no guarantees that one story won’t ramble off into some bizarre tangential places…
• I’m shooting for a minimum of 1,500 words a day. The more 1,500-word-days I accomplish, the fewer 3,000-word days I need to have to make up for slacking.  Fifteen hundred words isn’t really that bad; when I’m rolling, I can knock out that many words in under an hour, especially if I’m turning off such speedbumps as, well, editing.  I’m actually hoping for more like 2,000 per day, but 1,500’s the actual bottom-line goal.
• Have fun. This one’s actually harder than it sounds for me because I get so wrapped up in my pursuit of perfection.  Trying to get back to that “spirit of NaNo” business, I intend to just go forward and not give a damn about editing or perfection.  I have to keep that “first draft” idea firmly in mind and know that I can revise the hell out of whatever I write after November.  I just want to relax and try to enjoy the process without being so wrapped up in the product.  (This is an ongoing concern for me in many areas of my life.)

You’ll notice over there in the sidebar (if you’re not reading this via RSS) that I’ve already posted one of the nifty NaNo calendars which show my total wordcount and day-by-day progress.  I’m hoping that putting this out there to all of you, and knowing that I have a public display of how well or poorly I’m doing, will help motivate me to finish.  So wish me luck — I hope to have a reasonably completed shitty first draft of a novel in a little over a month!

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

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

“Yes, this is a form e-mail. Because I get asked this question a lot: ‘How do I become a comedian?’ The answer is very simple. It’s so simple, that no one can ever accept that it’s the ONLY WAY. But rest assured, the lucky few who understand how simple it is, and go and do this simple thing, ALWAYS succeed: Go onstage a lot. Go onstage as much as you can. Don’t read books on comedy. Don’t take comedy classes. Don’t ask anyone how you should write material, or what they think of your material. Develop on your own. Go onstage. A lot. Every night. If there isn’t an open mike in your town, start one. And then go onstage. A lot. That’s it.” — Patton Oswalt, quoted by Warren Ellis, May 9, 2007

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

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

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

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

And wish me luck.

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

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

Caveats done. Enjoy.

ERIK
    Hey... who's the naked chick in your back yard?

DONOVAN
    What are you talking about?

ERIK
    I'm sorry, I thought that was pretty clear from the thing where
    I said "naked chick" and "back yard."

    Right over there by the pool.  She looks kinda dazed.

    She's probably whacked out of her head on something and doesn't have any
    clue where she is.

    Man, I thought this was supposed to be a nice neighorhood, and here
    you've got naked junkies wandering around as they please.

PIPER COMES OVER AND LOOKS OUT THE WINDOW.  HER EYES WIDEN AND HER HAND GOES TO
HER MOUTH.

PIPER
    Oh my god.  You weren't kidding.

ERIK
    Of course I wasn't.  Right there, girl, no clothes.

    There's plenty of things I'll joke about.  Naked chicks aren't one of
    them.

PIPER
    It's December, she's got to be freezing to death!

ERIK
    Think I'm gonna go out and talk to her.

DONOVAN
    You sure you want to do that?  If she is strung out on something, don't
    you think she might be a little, I dunno, dangerous?

ERIK
    Well, I don't think she's got much in the way of hidden weapons
    on her, from the looks of it.  I think I'll be OK.

    But thanks so much for your concern.

DONOVAN GLARES AT ERIK, BUT SAYS NOTHING.

PIPER GRABS HER HEAVY WINTER COAT OFF THE BACK OF THE COUCH AND THROWS IT TO
ERIK.

PIPER
    Hey, If you're going to go, take her my coat.

ERiK
    Kinda liked the naked, myself, but if you say so...

ERIK WALKS OUT INTO THE BACKYARD, WATCHING THE GIRL, WHO'S TURNED AWAY FROM US
AT THIS POINT, ARMS WRAPPED TIGHT AROUND HERSELF.  WE GET OUR FIRST (TASTEFUL,
PLEASE) LOOK AT HER NOW:  SHE'S TALL, ALMOST SIX FEET, AND SLIM -- ALMOST
EMACIATED, ACTUALLY.  SHE'S ALSO FILTHY, COVERED IN GRIME.  HER HAIR IS CURLY
AND VERY LONG, DOWN TO HER WAIST, AND IT TOO IS FILTHY, MATTED.

CLOSE ON HER BACK, FROM ERIK'S POV:  WE CAN SEE SUBSTANTIAL SCARRING AND WELTING
ON HER BACK, HER SHOULDERS, HER UPPER ARMS.

ERIK
    Hey... are you OK?

    Are you high?

THE GIRL TURNS NOW AND LOOKS AT US, AND WE CAN SEE HER BEAUTY UNDER THE DIRT.
HER EYES, THOUGH FILLED WITH FEAR AND AND CONFUSION, ARE NEVERTHELESS BEAUTIFUL.

GIRL
    H -- high?  No, I don't...

    Is -- is this P-Piper's house?  It l-looks kind of like it, but I was
    just -- just...

THE GIRL, ARMS STILL WRAPPED AROUND HERSELF, STARTS CRYING -- HARD.  IT'S NOW
ERIK'S TURN TO LOOK CONFUSED.  COMPASSION ISN'T SOMETHING THAT COMES EASILY TO
HIM.

ERIK
    Hey, hey, take it easy, OK?  You're fine.

HE COMES OVER TO HER AND CAUTIOUSLY PLACES HIS LEFT HAND ON HER RIGHT SHOULDER.

ERIK
    Yeah, this is Piper's house.  She's inside.

GIRL
    She is?

ERIK
    Sure she is, her and that Donald kid.

GIRL
    Donald... you mean Donovan?  He's here too?

    Would you please... would you take me to them?  I need --

    (small) -- I need to see my friends.

ERIK
    Um, hey, I brough you a coat.  You must be freezing.

GIRL
    No, I'm... I'm really not cold.

ERIK
    Cold or not, you're still nakes, so put on the coat.

    Now c'mon, let's get you inside.

ERIK SLIPS HIS ARM AROUND HER SHOULDER, TRYING VERY HARD NOT TO DO ANYTHING
IMPROPER (WHICH ISN'T AS DIFFICULT FOR HIM TO DO AS HE'D LIKE TO PRETEND).  HE
LEADS HER AROUND THE POOL AND TOWARD THE DOOR INTO THE BASEMENT.

FROM INSIDE THE BASEMENT NOW:  ERIK COMES IN FIRST, THE GIRL BEHIND SO THAT WE
DON'T GET A GOOD LOOK AT HER JUST YET.  PIPER AND DONOVAN BOTH LOOK NERVOUS.

ERIK
    I don't think she's a junkie.  She says she knows you two and wanted to
    see you.

ERIK NOW MOVES OUT OF THE WAY SO DONOVAN AND PIPER GET A GOOD LOOK AT THE GIRL
FOR THE FIRST TIME.

GIRL
    Piper!  Oh god, I'm so glad to see you, I don't know what's going on and
    your house looks so different --

PIPER
    (small) oh my god

SHOT ON DONOVAN, LOOKING AT THE GIRL; DONOVAN FAINTS.

GIRL
    Piper?  What happened to you?  You've gotten so big, but I don't
    understand, that doesn't make any --

PIPER IS NOW SHAKING, TEARS ON HER CHEEKS.

PIPER
    Angela?

GIRL
    Yeah, of -- of course it's me.

    Who else would I be?

PIPER WALKS SLOWLY OVER TO THE GIRL -- TO ANGELA -- AND GENTLY TOUCHES HER FACE,
WIPING AWAY SOME OF THE FILTH.  SHE STARES HARD INTO ANGELA'S EYES, TRYING TO
GAUGE WHETHER OR NOT THE GIRL IS WHO SHE SAYS SHE IS.

PIPER
    Angela... you're -- you're supposed to be dead.

ANGELA
    (small) what?

PIPER
    There was -- there was a fire.  At your house, the night of your
    birthday party.  No one knows what started it.

    You were inside, all of you, and --

    -- you died.

    You.  Your parents.

    David.

ANGELA
    Piper, I -- why would you say something like that to me?  If it's
    supposed to be a joke, it's not very --

PIPER
    I'm not joking, sweetie.

    The police told us you were dead.

    You've been dead for five years.

REALIZATION SPREADS OVER ANGELA'S FACE NOW -- SHE KNOWS PIPER'S NOT JOKING.  SHE
CAN LOOK AT PIPER, AND AT DONOVAN, AND SHE CAN TELL THAT THEY'RE SEVENTEEN, NOT
THE TWELVE SHE REMEMBERS.  SHE KNOWS THIS ROOM LIKE SHE KNOWS HER OWN FACE, AND
SHE CAN SEE THE DIFFERENCES.  SHE KNOWS.

ANGELA
    Five years?  But I just saw you yesterday -- my god, my birthday party
    was just yesterday, and now you're saying --

    -- my parents are dead?  David is... ?

PIPER
    I'm so sorry, sweetie, I really am, but I have to tell you -- that's
    less on my mind then wondering how it is you're not dead, how you're
    standing here in my basement.

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

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

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

“Good. So post it.”

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

“Bullshit. Post it.”

“No, seriously, I can’t —”

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

It was at that point that I gave in.

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

Stay tuned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Substituting onomatopoeic words in place of these run-of-the-mill verbs is a quick and easy way to inject some metaphorical hot beef into your screenplay. Onomatopoeia, of course, is the process of creating words that phonetically resemble the sounds they’re supposed to represent, such as buzz or fart. Not only will onomatopoeic verbs keep your screenplay feeling fresh and minty, but they can also help to splush a more vivid and engaging cinematic vision. [Did you see what I did there? Splush is the onomatopoeic version of the word paint! In screenwriting terms, this is called a transition (or tranny). As in: "Did you hear that Mamet got caught doing a tranny?"]

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

Your neck will thank me for it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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