A Leap of Faith

When you throw yourself off a cliff, you have two options: you embrace the idea of meeting whatever lies below, or you fly. Self-described rational thinkers often don't believe they can fly, and refuse to try. For them, leaping is ill advised because depending on how high the cliff, and the character of the terrain, the meeting below could have quite an impact upon them. The dreamers among us leap anyway. We stand at the top of the cliff, throw caution to the wind, and follow it over the edge. We don't know if we can fly, but we open ourselves to the possibility. Why not? Could happen.

I jumped off a cliff this week. I signed myself up for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writers Month). The idea behind NaNoWriMo is to write a novel during the month of November. This idea scares me as much as it excites me. I've never written a novel before. In fact, I've never written anything longer than 1200 words, so 50,000 is a daunting leap forward. It's writing more each day than any piece I've ever attempted before. Is this a fool's errand? Maybe. But what's the downside? An incomplete novel? A poorly written novel? Failure can teach more than success, and even a bad novel is better than no novel at all.

That said, I have no intentions of failing. Call it foolishness. Call it over-reaching. Call it hubris, if you will, but here goes nothing. Second star on the right and straight on to morning. I'm planning on flying.

Creatively snacking, and missing meals

Never go shopping when you're hungry.  Ages-old wisdom we've all heard, and may of us try and abide by.  When we're hungry, who knows what may end up in our shopping baskets?  Did you really need sixteen different types of cookies?  Sure, you'd like something to snack upon with your tea (must buy more tea, too!), but maybe one variety might have been fine.  The biscotti, for example: not really tea cakes.  They might go better with coffee. (add coffee to the list--and flavoured creamers while you're at it)  It's a downward spiral.

It turns out, that the same thing can happen when you're creatively hungry.  Who'd a thunk it?  When you start to unleash your creative side, as I did with writing, suddenly and without warning you may end up trying to sample the store!  I'm craving photography!  I pulled out my old guitar, untouched for years.  Oh, can I do world design in SL?  Yes!  What else can I build?  And the list goes on.  And like shopping hungry, I ended up getting everything but what I went to the store to buy--I've forgotten to write!

I suppose there are worse things in life than being creatively gluttonous, but it's nice to differentiate between snacks and your meals.  I'd hate to fill up on potato chips and not have room for the steak.  They key seems to be moderation and creative synergy.  There's no reason you can't have the chips with the steak.  Music and writing can become song lyrics.  Writing stories and poems to accompany photographs can combine those arts easily enough.  It's a matter of identifying the entree from the side dishes, in your creative life. 

Putting the work in your works

There are two people who seem to want to get in the way of good writing, and the vile pair have an insidious hiding place: inside of us.

You know them: Ego Maniac, the One Draft Wonder.  He'll spew out something on the fly and if people don't like it, it's because they can't understand his genius.  The other half of the destructive duo is Self Doubt, the perpetual revisionist.  He's the one who is never happy with what he creates and makes excuses as to why he can't let it be read or published. 

I'd love to say, "Kill them to death," but in reality, they're who keeps us honest.  We're at our best when we walk the knife edge between the two.  Objectivity isn't easy.  When we go deep into ourselves to write something, we have a hard time detaching ourselves from it.  If it's not loved, we feel that we're not loved.  And that applies to our own impressions of what we've done, as well.  If we don't love our own work, we self-hate.  We shouldn't. Nor should we be over-confident.

Our works take work.  We write, read, revise, read, set aside, return, read, revise, read, etc.  Good writing can take many drafts to get right.  Sometimes the sentiment is dead on, but the words were using aren't worthy of the feelings we're trying to express.  They just don't evoke the same passion in an outside reader.  Sometimes the words are beautiful, and meaningless.  We need to recognize this; we need to fix our problems. 

I never saw this more clearly than in my effort to write a sonnet.  I knew what I wanted to say. I knew the rhyme scheme and meter I needed.  I made something that was technically correct, and it was...fair.  It didn't really knock my socks off.  That's because writing within formal parameters is hard work!  But it's work worth doing.  If we want to not just write, but write well, we need to do the work.  Readers will see the difference between the scribbler who simply vomits words onto a page, and the artist who carefully and lovingly crafts something magical.  

Caution: Emotions Hiding Within

When you start digging deep within yourself to write, and we're not talking about superficial stories that are fun to read, but rather the stuff you keep locked away in the deep reaches of your self (yes, that's two words), you're apt to open some doors you may rather have left closed.  Not that it's a bad thing to open these doors because a door goes both ways: the emotions you let out allow other emotions back in.  It's just that you may not be ready for what those doors have been carefully hiding, perhaps for years. 

I had the opportunity to scribe a poem recently: my first foray into the art form.  This wasn't like the short stories I've written before.  Those were intended to amuse or confuse the reader--simple little tales.  This one was all me, pulled deep from within.  I hadn't realized what I was writing or where it was coming from until I heard it read aloud.  I wasn't ready for the rush of emotions it unleashed.

Overall, this will be a cathartic experience, I think, and a learning one.  I can't tell anyone what they might experience in a similar situation; it's far too tied to self.  I will venture to inform, nascent writers, that when you're ready and willing to open a vein, not for the purposes of performing for an audience, not for the adoration, not for shock value, but for the sake of art itself, brace yourself: you're in for a surprise.

Pampering the Inner Writer

The writer in all of us is a temperamental artist, and needs to be coddled once in a while. So why not spoil it? Besides, when you spoil your inner writer, you get the benefit too!

For me, it's tactile things, things that hearken back to a less technology-oriented time. Did I mention that, my Kindle aside, I'm a Luddite at heart? My pampering, this time, has taken the form of a leather journal cover from Oberon Design. So many beautiful choices, it was hard to settle upon one. To fill the journal, I love the Moleskine journals. They simply feel nice, and are built to open flat, which makes them easy to use, too. I already have some fine fountain pens (Waterman, Parker, Rotring, Lamy, and others), but I'm just as happy with a straight pen and a bottle of cocoa brown ink I picked up from Levenger. For ambiance, I have a brass candle lamp with a cut glass shade. I love the shadows that candles cast. They add an air of mystery that saturating electric lights robs from us.

Whether it's writing in my journal, or writing letters (wax sealed, of course!), taking myself back in time with some fine things from a bygone era really helps bring out the writer in me. And when my inner writer is happy, and productive, I'm happy too.

Writing to Win

It's hard to see things clearly when you have your head up your ass. When I first discovered the writing community in Second Life, I wandered about Cookie Island exploring all the creative opportunities it afforded. One thing of note was the INKsters' Daily Writing Contest.

"Not for me," I proudly thought. "I don't write to compete with anyone." It's amazing how smugness can mask cowardice and stupidity. I don't compete? What did I think publishing was all about? Everything I will send in to be published is effectively being entered into a contest, competing with all the myriad submissions the publisher receives. If I want to be published, I'll be competing, whether I want to admit it or not.

So if I'm competing anyway, why not hone the skill? The INKsters' Daily Contest is a perfect whetstone for your pen. First and foremost it gets you writing which, without doing, you're not much of a writer. Second, it encourages you to write well. When you don't win, which will be often, you're forced to pick up your game. When you do win, you learn what worked and can use that to later advantage.

So now, my head once again in daylight, I plan on submitting an entry as often as I can. I'm not afraid of losing any longer, because that will only force me to get better. I'm not afraid of competition, because the more competition I have the better I need to be. And getting good raises your chances of winning the big prize: publication.

How Are You Going To Keep Them Down On The (Server) Farm?

Once you find what you love to do, it's painfully difficult to go back and do what you need to do.

Engineering pays the bills. And I'm good at it. Not the geeky kid building flashy video games good, but the older bearded Unix guy with the ponytail good. And it (usually) pays quite well, which writing doesn't. But now that I've tasted the joys of writing, I just can't find the passion to write software anymore: been there, done that, take a nap.

Yesterday, I was practically bouncing in my chair. Was it solving the impossible problem that was dropped in my lap with no documentation that had me doing a Tigger all day, or was it that I conceived and wrote a 100 word short story (a form I've been meaning to try for a while) on my drive to work?

I've seen Paris, and now the farm looks like so much dirt.

Taking a Dip

It's time to get back to journal writing again. I've set it aside recently, concentrating on fiction writing, but journal writing has the advantages in that it's a little something every day, so you're always writing, and it's private: you don't have to care what it says or how well it reads. It lets you write when you can't otherwise write, and any writing is a good thing.

For journal writing, I always go very low tech. For those who haven't tried using bottled ink with a dip or fountain pen, I'd highly recommend it. There's an elegance to liquid ink that you can't get with the paste ink of a ballpoint. It's smooth. It flows.

Using a dip pen is a ritual. It's not something you do on a whim. You select the ink that suits your mood: inks are as different as wines, and each has it's own character. Next you select the nib. Are you wanting a fine point, or is your mood more suited to a broad stroke? Finally, comes the act of writing itself. You open the bottle, dip the nib, and set it to paper. You write a sentence or two and pause--you collect your thoughts as you refill the nib, and start again. It's a deliberate act, and makes you feel connected to what you're writing.

Finding the Write Time

Engineering pays the bills, but it really screws up the time I have to write. It's not just the work hours: it's the commute. Oh, but to be able to write and drive at the same time!

I've tried dictating to myself using a tape recorder, but that just ends up frustrating me to no end. I don't think and work in a linear manner, and tape is nothing if not linear. Voice recognition, converting spoken words to text that I could read later might be interesting, but I'm imaging the transcription now...

The round should as the meter hit no that's no good don't right that oh crap it's recording this two how do I watch where you're going when will people learn two drive oh it's still recording how do I stop it what the move already people it's the pedal on the right...

Yeah, let's skip that idea for now. I'll have to find other ways to make some time to write.

A Luddite Goes Electric

Writers start off as readers. Good writers read a lot. Who the hell doesn't like new toys?

As odd as it might seem for someone who has spent a career working in leading edge software design, I'm really a luddite at heart. I love firelight over electric light. Give me a bottle of ink and a dip pen, and I'm happier than I could be writing on a high-end computer. So when the e-book buzz started getting louder and louder, it was easy for me to dismiss it out of hand.

Until I saw the Kindle.

Damn. They did a nice job on the design of that thing. A screen made of electronic paper. EVDO wireless capability so you can buy books directly from the device anywhere there is cellular service. It's small, light, easy to use...

I bought one. Yes, the luddite bought an e-book reader. And I'm loving it! In addition to the wireless, I can convert all my own material to e-book format using MobiPocketCreator and transfer it to the Kindle via a USB link. The annotation feature on the Kindle lets me proof my work and make notes in a more comfortable environment than sitting in front of the computer. I can't say enough good things about the device.

It's not all perfect (the power button is hard to reach when the Kindle is in it's cover and I'm always afraid it'll fall out of the cover since it's only held there by a small plastic tab) but it is a well-conceived, well built gadget, and I love it.

Even if you're a luddite like me, but someone who loves to read, don't dismiss the latest e-book readers. They've arrived.

Filling out forms

Should there be a test required to get a poetic license? I've been reading all I can find about different forms of literature. Perhaps it's the engineer in me, but I'm of the mind that in order to deviate from formalism well, you need to understand formalism. Writing should be deliberate, not accidental.

In my searches I've come across a lot of poetry on the internet. Some of it is quiet lovely. So much more of it is not. Far too much of it is free verse. Not that free verse is necessarily bad, there's been a lot of wonderful free verse published, but whatever happened to meter and rhyme?

I could probably slap together some free verse and call it poetry, but I want to understand what I'm doing. I want to craft my work, not simply let it spill from my pen onto paper. Does doing that inhibit creativity, or enhance it? Does it take more creativity to shape your feeling to fit a form? Does it take extensive knowledge of the various forms to allow me to choose a form suited to my ideas?

Formal poetry is work; no question about it. It's not something I, personally, can do off the cuff. It's a very deliberate act of shaping expression, but that's what I think makes it so much greater: it's not just the idea being expressed, but the form it takes, and that adds to the expression.

Am I ready to try my hand at formal poetry? Maybe. But I think I may need to find my feet first.

I've got the whole world, in my head...

It's getting rather crowded in there, and it's only going to get worse before it gets better.

I've started working on a few more short stories. Two of them exist only as ideas, and titles. Another seems to be expanding, taking up more and more idea space in my head. I suspect it isn't a short story after all, but a novella or even a novel.

It's quite daunting. Thus far I've been content to write short stories and examine other short form fiction. Now one of my creations has taken on a life of its own, but it's not yet fully formed. That's frustrating me. I'm writing page upon page of notes as ideas come, but nothing cohesive has presented itself yet. I can see images of the world in my story, but I'm not yet living there, or able to take an extended vacation there as yet. I need to be able to see that world as well as I can the one I spend most of my days inhabiting.

The idea if having a story that might lend itself to a longer work is exciting, but terrifying as well. I'm a rather harsh self-critic, and don't wish to screw up a good idea, and I think it might be a good idea. Neither to I want to over analyze and kill it that way. It's a tricky balancing act.

Shifting a Paradigm

My desk yelled at me this morning. It's annoying when your desk, one you consider your most silent partner, starts nagging you and won't let you get any work done.

"I'm wrong. Fix me."

Wrong? It's the same desk it has been for years. Little about it has changed, so why is it suddenly wrong? I looked it over, carefully examining the manuals and software CDs cluttering the shelves. They are just as they were. Why is that wrong?

"I'm wrong. I wasn't before, but I am now. Fix me."

What's that silly hunk of wood babbling about--Hold on! It hasn't changed. It hasn't changed!

I have.

I hate it when my desk knows more than I do, or at least is more attentive than I am. Nothing for it but a makeover. Now, instead of stacks of CD and software manuals, it's :The American Heritage Dictionary; The Highly Selective Dictionary for the Extraordinarily Literate; Roget's Thesaurus; The Chicago Manual of Style; The AP Stylebook and Libel Manual; Strunk and White Elements of Style; The New Oxford Guide to Writing; Woe is I; Eats, Shoots & Leaves; and Lapsing into a Comma.

Now, it's a writer's desk. And it's quiet again.

Holding it together

I'm hearing voices again. Only now do I realize that I'm hearing too many different voices.

In retrospect, it's obvious. How could I have not noticed it? I very consciously choose to have characters speak in their own voices. If a character is a kid, he should talk like a kid, not like a literature professor. I don't think anyone would argue that point.

What's easier to forget, though, is that the prose surrounding that characters will look uncomfortable out of place if it looks like it was written by a literature professor. The whole work needs some cohesion. Obvious, right? It is once you look at it. It's very easy to miss if you're comfortable with a particular style of prose. You may not even notice that you're doing it; I didn't.

I tend toward a more formal style of writing, coming from an engineering background. But, that can clash with "folksy" character dialog. I was so focused on making sure the characters were consistent within themselves I completely ignored the prose style. Oops.

Consistency needs to be an all-around theme. All the parts needs to hang together as a whole. It's so obvious it's embarrassingly easy to overlook.

Enough is Enough!

The end is nigh! All that can be said has been said, and any more will just prolong the agony. It's time to accept it.

No, the world isn't coming to an untimely demise. At least, not the whole world. For one little piece of it, though, the piece that exists in that in-progress story, there comes a point you have to put down the pen and walk away.The question is, when?

Not everyone is going to like every aspect of your work. Maybe that's a good thing. If something is 100% accessible, how much did you have to compromise to make it that way? Some readers may have trouble swallowing some of the things you're feeding them. Is that because it's bad or because it doesn't suit their tastes? I know people who put ketchup on hot dogs. Need I say more? So, how do you tell if it's wrong, or wrong for a particular reader? It's a tough call, and one I struggle to answer.

Read, rinse, repeat

My eyes are on fire and my brain is filled with fish.

Trying to put together a final draft isn't as easy as it looks. How many times can you read, and re-read the same fish story before you just don't see it any longer. I think I'm happy with the tone of the story at this point, though I'm sure that I could tweak it constantly for years. I think I found the last of the technical glitches: a misused word that a spell checker or grammar checker would never catch.

Let that last be a lesson: spell checkers and grammar checkers are not foolproof. They will choke on perfectly good sentences and let nonsense pass.

It's good to have someone you know and trust look over your manuscript. Hearing that readers like your work after it has been published is wonderful. Hearing everything that's wrong with it before it's been published is also wonderful. You don't have to agree with everything your friend/editor says, but it's good to hear it regardless. It might point out some things you've missed.

A little help from my friends

Shut up and listen to the voices in your head. That is, of course, assuming that the voices are those of your characters and not something telling you do go out and do unspeakable things.

Getting stuck in a story is frightening. I was in the middle of writing a short story and I found myself with two gaping holes in it. One was explaining the basic premise. I knew what I wanted to do, but I couldn't make it work. The other was the beginning of the end. I had the very ending nailed down, as well and the driving events that lead toward it, but I couldn't tie the two together. It was driving me nuts.

Then a voice spoke up.

"Let me tell it," it said.

"You're not in the story," I replied.

"But if I was in the story, I could say all the things that you're thinking are problems, and that the readers will think are problems, so they'll know what's going on. Oh, and I can be the one who leads everyone to the ending for you. You just have to put me in."

He was right. I needed him in there. Once I added him in, everything made sense.

Sometimes, our characters are smarter than we are. Listen to them.

Here I am, stuck in the middle...

How do you build a bridge without falling into the river and drowning? How to you make sure both ends meet in the middle? Apparently, writing has more than a few things in common with engineering.

I'm not the kind of storyteller that sets a scene and sees where it takes him. I like to start at the end. It's important I know where the story is heading, what kind of resolution I want, and work toward that ending. Maybe that's the software engineer in me speaking. You always need to know what the program is supposed to do, then figure out how to make that happen.

Outlining an ending isn't hard for me. Finding a starting point is a little harder, but still not too bad. That middle chunk, though... When you know where you want to end, and you have an idea how you want to start, the work is figuring out how to build the bridge between the two, and not fall in the river doing it. It's scary up here. Does anyone have a parachute and a life preserver I can borrow?

A view askew

I should have been ready for this, and I'm more surprised that I wasn't than I am that it happened: Writing changes how you see the world. This should have been obvious to me since I've dabbled in photography since I was a kid and the same holds true there. In photography, there comes a point when you don't just look at things anymore: You start to frame them; You think about the lighting; You think about composition. Everything becomes a potential photograph in your eye. What's more, you never really go back to how it was before. Once your perception shifts, it's there for good.

Writing does the same thing to you. Take a walk and look at things happening around you. There will come a time when you no longer simply look at and dismiss them. You start describing them in your mind. You look at two people sitting on opposite sides of a park bench and you wonder about them. Perhaps they're strangers, sitting far apart because they're uncomfortable with an unknown person near them. That might seem plain and boring at first, but you dig deeper. Maybe one of them is looking for someone to speak with, anyone at all, but is afraid to open a conversation. It gets more interesting. Why does he need to talk? What is his story? Did something bad happen to him? Did he do something wrong and needs to confess it? How will the other person react if and when he's told?

Where once you'd see two people sitting and avoiding each other without giving them a passing thought, now you see possibilities. Everything becomes a story, and you want to know that story. You can discover their stories, or create ones for them. Either way, you won't walk past that bench any longer without seeing a story there. You've crossed over, and there's no going back.

Taking the first steps

It may seem obvious, but the first step in writing is to write. Write anything. I've heard it said, and found it true, that writing is like water seeping through a crack. Sometimes it flows, sometimes it gets plugged up for a time, but so long as the water flows, the crack will get wider and the water will flow more freely. A journal is a great way to write each day, even if it's nonsense you will never let anyone read. Maintaining a blog is another. Your imagination is your only limit.

The next step: reading. I've always been an avid reader, but now more than ever I'm trying to read anything I can get my hands on. The more you read, the more you begin to understand voices, structure, and the written word. Oral conversation is not a substitute.

And so, it begins...

It started with the closing of a web site. A friend was shutting down the site she had been maintaining, and had asked my help in writing a farewell note to the users. It went over well: very well. Suddenly, I'm getting people encouraging me to write more.

I've always loved words. As often as not I'll read something, not for the content, but for the way it was written. Beautiful writing captivates me, though sadly it's becoming a lost art, with email and blogging (guilty!) filling the world with whatever passes for language today. Maybe well written material isn't necessarily more scarce than in the past, but it does get lost in the noise.

My love of words has always inspired me to try and be more creative in anything I write, which until recently has mostly been technical design documents and a journal. Granted, they were design documents filled with more humor and imagery than might be typical, but sometimes you just need to let the demon loose. I had never truly considered writing anything for publication.

Until those encouraging words got me to thinking: Judging by what you can find in any bookstore, a lot of other people are writing. Some of it is very good, and much of it...isn't to my liking. Why not toss my hat into the ring as well? What have I to lose.

This, then, is the chronicle of an engineer who wants to be a writer. Check that. This is the chronicle of an engineer who wants to write professionally. I am already a writer. I write constantly, and cannot not write. Now we find out of anyone wants to read what I write. It should be an interesting journey.