Tag: process

Beauty in the Process

A friend shared this video with me a little while ago when I was complaining about the parts of the writing process I didn’t enjoy doing. It’s a good reminder that every step of the process has its own beauty, its own value.

I want to treat all of my efforts with the same level of respect that master sculptor Fred X. Brownstein does here. From the books I read and the art I view, to the books and art I create, I aim to give it all as much love and care as I see in his process. (And, I might just try writing with a newspaper hat on…)

Craving Creativity

Twenty One Pilots released a new album a short while back, and with it, a song I’ve been loving called The Craving. I probably listened to that song at least 50 times the day it released alone, but it’s the video that really got to me. The video itself is a metaphor for the creative process, and the imagery dredged up some deep childhood memories.

The first time I saw the video, I got a rush of the more unpleasant of emotions: sadness, embarrassment, shame. Watching it dug up a memory of my first go with a shotgun, seven or eight years old, my nerves going nuts, and getting knocked back hard as soon as I pulled the trigger. I missed the target, and couldn’t even stay on my feet, caught instead by the guy showing me how to shoot. He knew the kick was coming of course. I didn’t. I handed him the gun and walked away feeling like a failure.

I spent a lot of time at that gun club when I was young, a kind of bar and shooting range blended together. It was a fun place overall, really. I learned to play pool there as soon as I could see over the edge of the table, and I spent hours upon hours playing the Popeye arcade game. I also passed many evenings wandering the range as the shotguns lay silent, collecting unbroken clay pigeons, trying to be useful, and enjoying the stillness, the silence, while everyone else was inside playing pool or poker.

But that one memory, that one failure, has the power to creep in and override everything else. That day, as the story of my failed shotgun attempt made the rounds, it was met with laughter. Of course I got knocked back. Didn’t I know the kick was coming? Ha ha! Stupid kid. And as those emotions came boiling back up, I kept watching the video, kept listening to the song, kept pushing through the emotions.

As the days passed, and my view count racked up, I started to see the video and my story, in a different light. I realized that all the value, all the joy, is in the process, the creation.

Thinking back on my gun club experiences, I remembered the hours spent filling shotgun shells, one of my favorite activities. I remembered the mechanics of the machine, and how satisfying it was to combine the varied parts to make something new and useful.

I lingered on the memory of my hours spent walking the range, some of the most peaceful times I could get at that age. It was just me, wandering the field, my shoes crunching through chunks of broken clay as the easy breeze drifted in from the bay. I was simply exploring then, trying to discover useful things, without much care of what happened after.

It’s not much different from what I do now. I sit here, putting words on the page, and try to find the useful bits I can combine to create something whole. The value is in the journey, in the process. And the beauty is nobody can take that process away. Not critics, not reviewers, not even our robot overlords.

None of this is original thinking of course, but sometimes we need a reminder, to hear it in a fresh way, like I did with this song. Now, watching it one more time, I’m craving a bit more creativity, because that’s the part that really matters.

Heinlein’s Rules

In a 1947 essay titled “On the Writing of Speculative Fiction,” writer Robert A. Heinlein laid out his now-famous rules. I’ve tried to follow them in the past with varied success, struggling most with #2 and #5. I’m sharing them now as a reminder to myself more than anything. His rules (with an addition from Harlan Ellison that I learned watching Neil Gaiman) are these:

  1. You must write
  2. You must finish what you start
  3. You must refrain from rewriting except to editorial order
    (…and then, only if you agree – Ellison)
  4. You must put it on the market
  5. You must keep it on the market until sold

I have a habit of overcomplicating things, of trying to go down too many paths at the same time and finding myself stuck for my confused effort. Instead, I’ll be simplifying things going into the last few months of the year.

Keep it simple.

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

First Draft of a Dream

The 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:

Thanks for reading!