How I Keep My Inbox Clean

I’ve recently set up a mailing list as a simple way to keep readers informed on new releases. Putting it together, I started thinking about how I deal with newsletters, marketing emails, and spam on the receiving end.

I use Gmail, and it does a fine job of sorting out spam by its definition, but my definition is far broader, and I want that junk gone, too. The company that just bought my address from a third party? Banished. The flood of marketing emails I got from buying a single shirt from a new store? Trashed. I hate it all, and I bet some of you do, too.

With that in mind, I thought I’d share my method, simple as it is, in case you like spam as much as I do. Which is to say, like a splinter under a fingernail.

Be Ruthless in Unsubscribing

This first pointer is the most effective, and I use it daily. Look at every email you receive and ask yourself, “Is this adding value to my life?” What value means is up to you to decide, but if the email isn’t adding it, hit that unsubscribe button at the bottom. Your life is far too important, your time far too valuable, to waste staring at your inbox.

Filter the Rest

Next, I create a filter for the rest. Every email service I’ve ever used allows you to create filters or rules dictating how to handle incoming mail. This isn’t a productivity tutorial kind of site, so if you’re using Gmail, you can get the steps here. Otherwise, just search whatever email service you use and the keyword “filter” and you’ll find a tutorial I’m sure. (Of course, I don’t want to leave you hanging, so if you’re still stuck after the tutorial, hit me up at justin@justinwilliams.com and I’ll help you out.)

When you create your filter, set it up to grab any email that includes the word “unsubscribe” anywhere within. That’s how you get ’em. I’ve used this feature to set up a rule that sends those emails to a special folder, which I’ve labeled with the incredibly clever name: Filtered.

This pulls all my newsletters and sets them aside to read at my convenience. It also grabs all those miscellaneous emails I mentioned before, and about 99% of the ones I can’t even think of to list out right now. It keeps my inbox nice and clear of junk, allowing me to address it when I’m ready.

If I Haven’t Chased You Off…

Now, with all that said, if you want to sign up for that email list I mentioned and get the pretty good and very free short story I’ve attached as an incentive, you can do it here. I won’t spam you. I hate spam, probably more than you do, and I’ll be damned if I end up on the sending side. If you want, use that filter I described above to keep me out of your inbox. Or, if my story doesn’t earn me a place in your reading life, smash that unsubscribe button.

You are far too valuable to waste your time in a junk-filled inbox.

Header photo by Pau Casals on Unsplash

The Skull Speaks

I’ve played with this chattering skull for forty years.

Recently, I’ve been working on a story called (for now) “Put Another Nickel In” and I’ve got a few thousand words on the page so far. Today, the main character finally gave me his a name, Hunch, and I hit my word count goal. It’s a solid day’s work, considering the habit I’m trying to build of writing a thousand words per day, every day, following the example of this Ray Bradbury quote:

“I’m accustomed, you see, to getting up every morning, running to the typewriter, and in an hour I’ve created a world. I don’t have to wait for anyone. I don’t have to criticize anyone. It’s done. All I need is an hour, and I’m ahead of everyone. The rest of the day I can goof off. I’ve already done a thousand words this morning; so if I want to have a two or three-hour lunch, I can have it, because I’ve already beat everyone.”

Consistency over quantity. I’ve had bursts of it before, but never managed to keep it going for long. Hopefully this time is different.

At some point in the night, though, I realized that Hunch wasn’t alone. I don’t mean all the monsters he’s tasked with keeping in their enchanted sleep, but as far as a true companion. There was someone else in that chamber of horrors, if I would only listen. Like Hunch and his monsters, though, I went to sleep.

When I got back to the keyboard this morning, I started by cycling back through those first thousand words and trying harder to hear what the story was telling me. Just a few paragraphs in, I found that missing party: Jaw, a talking skull in the corner of the room.

I kept writing, going back through yesterday’s words and continuing on to new story, all while listening more closely, and hearing his voice. He had plenty to say.

In the end, I hit my thousand-word count for yet another day, found a new character, and learned more about the world I’m exploring.

I think that’s a fine definition of a successful day.

Bradbury quote taken from his essay “Shooting Haiku in a Barrel”, collected in Zen in the Art of Writing

Kaizen

Every little improvement adds up to great things.

When I was a kid, like, single-digits kid, I had a neighbor who was both a teenager and the coolest guy I’d ever known to that point in my life. He knew karate. He had a Nintendo. He had a computer. He even had email… in the eighties.

Most importantly, he had boxes upon boxes of beautiful and perfect comic books. He even drew his own and submitted work to Marvel, DC, etc.

And they wrote back!

I wanted to be just like him.

I started drawing more, practicing art, trying to improve. I practiced my storytelling, too. Someday, he would run his own comic company, and when he did, I would work there. That was the plan.

Then he told me the only way to get as good as him was to ignore everything else and draw constantly, even during school. “What about my grades?” I asked him. “You can’t worry about grades if you’re going to get good enough to be a professional artist.”

I was crushed.

I liked earning good grades.

I even liked my teachers.

Enter one of my first secret rules: I would never be good enough at art to make it a career.
That secret rule held for about 30 years.

Then I started trying again.

And not by sacrificing everything else important to me, but just by realizing it’s ok to practice just a little every day, to try and improve just a little every day.

I eventually started learning karate, too. Not because of my old neighbor, but because my own kid got involved in a great dojo and I wanted to share that journey.

Our sensei often talks about the concept of “kaizen”: basically, constant (little) improvements that add up to great change.

Now I try to improve a little bit every day, making small sacrifices for time, sure, but not giving up on the most important parts of my life. Will I become a master overnight? Of course not. And honestly, neither did my old neighbor. If he’s the kind of artist I want to be, he’s still out there learning somewhere, still finding the little tweaks in his work to make it even better. He’s still trying to be just a little bit better every day.

I try to practice kaizen now in all areas of my life. The result isn’t flashy. It doesn’t make for a great Instagram post or YouTube video, but it’s there, and it’s building a solid mountain of progress over time.

In the meantime, I just keep trying to be a little better than yesterday, leading to being a good deal better than last month, and miles ahead of last year. I’m slowly building to success—my vision of success—and instead of racing to get there I’m enjoying the ride.

And I can wait to get there.

Life goes by too quickly because we rush it.

I’m going a little at a time now, enjoying myself along the way.

Constant improvement.

Kaizen.

A Flurry of Inspiration

After taking years to finally finish drafting my first book, the second came in a flurry of inspiration and flow. Coming into November, I was already well into it. Then, using the NaNoWriMo challenge as an added motivator, I finished it up even earlier than I’d hoped.

The first draft of book two is done now, coming in right around 77,000 words just like the first book. I already have in mind several scenes that need to be added to improve the manuscript, so I expect that word count to go up quite a bit. For now, though, I’m moving right on to book three.

Without an outline, my goal is to get to the end of the series before I go back for revisions. Only then can I rewrite with the true end in mind, foreshadowing and focusing each book along the way. With the way it’s going, I’m confident I’ll get the first book finished and ready for the world sometime in 2024!

Identity Leads to Action

Self portraits (?) by a two-year-old Justin.

I’ve spent the last ten years or so wanting to be a writer.

For a small chunk of that, I’ve even written.

It feels like so much wasted time. Why didn’t I write more?

I’m realizing now that a big part of the problem was that, even though I wanted to be a writer, and even sometimes told people that’s what I was, I didn’t actually believe I was one. I simply saw myself as a stay-at-home dad. One that wrote sometimes, sure, but that was a secondary thing, no different than how I dabble in guitar, or paint now and then.

Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with being a stay-at-home parent. It was a huge blessing for our family to have a parent home. But, it wasn’t my identity. It was something I did for the benefit of my family, not something I felt called to do for myself.

Being a dad is an amazing and life-long role, of course, but the days of driving them to school and events, days of helping with homework and volunteering for field trips, that all has an expiration date. And who am I after that?

For me, I want to be a writer.

In fact, something I’ve recently noticed is this: no matter what other ideas or interests pop up, they all lead back to writing.

I play guitar because I like writing lyrics.

I paint because I like to illustrate my stories.

It all leads back to writing. Every time.

When I left my last corporate job to stay home with our new baby, I thought I’d take that chance to pursue my oldest childhood dream of becoming a writer. It was our second child, so I wasn’t naive about the free time I’d have or anything like that, but I was naive about being able to flip a mental switch and start a writing habit.

And so, for years and years, my writing habit was anything but. I’d write in bursts of motivation and inspiration, hit a roadblock, and stop for months. I told myself it was because the kids kept me busy, or the housework, or whatever excuse I could think of. Of course, none of those excuses stopped me from wasting hours surfing the web or watching television.

The problem wasn’t my family role. The problem was the way I saw myself. Instead of seeing me, the writer, I saw me, the guy that didn’t have the time for writing.

Lately, finally, I feel I’ve gotten past that roadblock.

For whatever other roles I have in life, when it comes to vocation, I’m a writer. Plain and simple.

That means I write.

Having that identity firmly in mind is the “ultimate form of intrinsic motivation”. Habit expert James Clear says:

“The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity. It’s one thing to say ‘I’m the type of person who wants this.’ It’s something very different to say ‘I’m the type of person who is this.’”

Identity is key. In fact, In his book The Practice, Seth Godin talks a bit about child prodigies, adding this:

“It’s not important that the kids developed their musical skills when they were eleven. It’s important that they developed the habit of identity. When they looked in the mirror, they saw themselves as musicians, as artists, as people who had committed to a journey.”

It’s the old “fake it ‘til you make it” idea.

If you want to be a writer, be a writer.

If you want to be an artist, be an artist.

You have to see yourself as the you you want to be far before the rest of the world sees it. If you know who you are, you’ll soon find yourself doing the things to make that identity real to the rest of the world as well.

As for me, I am a writer.

James Clear quote from his book Atomic Habits

Seth Godin quote from his book The Practice

The Color of Water

I often forget that water can be a prism, but had a vibrant reminder this morning. I’ve been sick the last few days, and this morning decided to push through and get a shower to see if that got me feeling better.

In the shower I was hit with a bit of dizziness, a combination of the heat and my virus-drained energy I’m sure. During it, though, my attention was grabbed by the water droplets clinging to the shower curtain.

In each, I saw all the colors of refracted white light.

A thousand captured and vibrant rainbows drifted slowly down the curtain as I lost myself in them for a moment, brief, but beautiful.

This experience was no doubt influenced by my current state. Still, it is an excellent reminder of the amazing world all around us, an amazing world ignored in the stress and rush of the usual day-to-day.

Even something as simple as a drop of water has the power to show us a universe of beauty.

Trust the Subconscious

A while back I finished a story in a whirlwind of subconscious-driven words. It was a blast to write that way, something my logical side loves to suppress.

But suppress isn’t a strong enough word. My logical side crushes the voice of the subconscious, stomps on it until the story falls out flat and lifeless.

This time, however, I managed to just go with it. Fix it when it’s finished, I told myself.

But I didn’t fix anything.

When I started rewriting, I nearly cut a few of the more inspired chunks because they didn’t fit my market-influenced (and misguided) idea of good writing. But, I managed to stop myself. I left those portions. They somehow felt right, like they belonged there. Instead of cutting them, I sent the story off to my editor. I knew full well she’d tell me to make the cuts.

I should have put more trust that my subconscious knew what it was doing.

Not only did she not tell me to make the cuts, she told me to push even further with them. Those subconscious bits that logic tried to force out, those were some of her favorite parts.

For me as a writer, when I try to logic my way through a story, it inevitably falls flat. Hayao Miyazaki has said he removes logic from his approach to storytelling:

“Logic is using the front part of the brain, that’s all. But you can’t make a film with logic. Or if you look at it differently, everybody can make a film with logic. But my way is to not use logic.”

After this experience, I think it’s time to do the same. Logic has its place (though I’m starting to doubt even that), but the drafting stage isn’t it.

After feeling so many of my stories had come out flat recently, I think it’s time for a different approach.

Trust your subconscious. I’ll be trusting mine.

Miyazaki quote taken from his Midnight Eye interview

First Draft of a Dream

After years of thinking about writing this book, years of wanting to write it, I’ve finally pushed through the resistance to do it. It’s the first draft of a dream, an adventure of gunslingers and magic, carnival games, curses, and maybe a pinch of cannibalism, but I’ll blame that bit on my subconscious. I think it’s a fun story, and hopefully on the next draft I can make it a very good one, too.

In the mean time, I’ve published two short stories to Amazon to get the foundation laid for bigger things to come. Check them out here: