Resolutions

I guess I should talk about what I’ll be doing instead of this blog, you know, since it’s the last of these regular posts. I’ve got a few different interests, actually, which aren’t quite writing the same way as just typing into a word processor. I feel like I want to be dabbling a bit more, you know, while I’m trying to figure out what I’m doing.

The one I’ve been interested in for the longest is a program called Twine, which is built to make text-based games, the sorts where you read a passage and move on to the next by clicking a hyperlink or one’s choice of hyperlinks. So it’s kind of like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, but there have been some very creative uses. I’m not saying I’m getting too creative with something I’ve only dabbled in so far, but this is the first time I’ve had a concrete idea for what story I’m telling, so I want to give it a try.

I also had a comic idea. It isn’t much and it’s definitely borrowing too much inspiration from someplace else, but that’s part of the point, I think. At least, that’s what I’ve got written down in my outline. I admit, I never really got into drawing, but that’s also accounted for, actually, so I’m excited to try.

And this is all on top of a few other writing projects -- the normal kind, I mean. But when I say I’m keeping myself busy, it’s mostly with stuff like those first two. Honestly, I’m pretty excited to get to work. I’ll miss this blog, and I’ll definitely come back to it when I have something to say (especially if that is “I finished this thing and other people are seeing it!”), but this blog was always about helping me finish thoughts, and this seems like a good place to end this one.

See you out there,

-F

The Beginning of the End

A phrase that comes up a lot when I’m scrambling to put a blog post together is “something I still probably need to interrogate”, a shorthand I’ve been using to mean “I can’t really go into this right now, but this post is about something I’ve noticed.” Sometimes the phrase stays to completion, sometimes it gets erased and replaced with something else, but what I want to do today is examine exactly why I’ve been using it. A meta-interrogation, if you will.

Some of it, I think, is that I’m torn. Some of this stuff I do legitimately want to go back and think about more, but while I recognize that blogs can be useful for long-form content, it’s not what I really think of them as. Maybe it’s a mental block I still need to get over, but that is certainly part of what stops me. This is especially true as I start wanting to be a writer in ways other than just this blog. “Is this a good blog topic or is this something I should save?” is always at the back of my mind.

The other part is a bit more personal. That is to say, I’ve interrogated it and it’s not something I’m willing to put here.

As time has gone on, then, I feel like I’ve lost sight of where exactly I want this blog to be. Originally, it was a project meant to make sure I actually finished something, tired as I was of starting a writing project and then losing steam immediately. And on that front, things have happened! I try not to keep a definite word count of things but my writing outside of this blog has extended into the high five-, maybe even six-digit range, taking up more of my time. Meanwhile, this blog has become more “something I sputter out every Tuesday evening or so.”

I think you can see where I’m going with this. I’d rather continue to focus my energies elsewhere, so when this year ends, so will the regular updates to this blog. There’s some careful wording there -- I won’t be taking this blog down, nor am I vowing to never post in here again, but I won’t be posting weekly anymore. This still feels like the place to drop media criticism every now and again, for example, especially when I’ve promised at least a few more of those.

This also means I’m going to make sure these final few regular posts go out with a bang. I’d dare not just limp along, say I’m stopping, and then limp a little bit more. This is more like that final burst of speed when the finish line is in sight.

Talk to you next week,

-F

A Weird Online Chat Quirk of Mine

There’s an old internet phrase (that is, old by internet standards, it’s probably only, like, a year in real-life time) that, boiled down to the essentials, is just “Imagine X” where X is some action you’re trying to downplay. It generally has negative associations, even when it tries to be humorous. “Imagine eating grilled cheese with ketchup,” is one, for example. “Imagine wearing those toed shoes,” is another. There are occasionally follow-ups, like “Couldn’t be me” or “this post brought to you by the Y gang” where Y is obviously opposed to X in some way, but again, this is the memetic phrase in its most basic form.

I don’t know what happened, but I’ve started using it an awful lot online, which wouldn’t be so bad, but like I said, it is kind of a negative phrase, and I think that might have translated over to my general mindset. Or maybe it’s that I’ve been feeling more negative lately and that’s why it’s been creeping in. Either way, I kind of wish I wasn’t doing it. It’s gotten to the point where I’ll type it out, realize exactly what I’m doing, and delete it again. Nobody else wants to see it, I think.

It is getting better, though. Deleting it without posting has meant that I’ve ended up not using it as much in normal online chats. And it hasn’t gotten into my normal speech patterns, so it hasn’t become that sort of habit, just an online one.

-F

Working on Finishing Things

When I started this blog, it came with this idea that I needed to at least “finish something.” That is to say, that’s probably not something you’ll find if you go through my opening posts, but it definitely was something that was going through my head at the time of this blog’s conception two and a half years ago. And, given that it’s a popular piece of advice for writers just starting off, I imagine it’s a popular need. But I’d like to interrogate why I needed to be told that in the first place, because I definitely did, and I think it’d be fun to talk about.

Some of it probably stems from how I start writing something in the first place. Generally, I start with a vague idea that either has a few opening lines attached or some set-piece that takes place near the middle or the end of the story. In the first case, well, it’s probably obvious to see why I stop there. The easy lines run out, and eventually, the whole thing just gets moved to the scrap pile to be used later (I have occasionally found uses for such things, at least). Pushing through there is largely a question of motivation and sometimes I just don’t have enough. I suppose that’s why another piece of advice is to just not tell people what you’re working on, because that can trick your brain into thinking that it’s already finished, which cuts down on the motivation juice.

Other times, the “set piece” times, I think that’s a problem of too much planning, or, at least, too much time spent idealizing just how cool the scene might be even though it’s thousands of words away. If I do manage to get to that scene eventually, the characters have inevitably changed in some way from how I initially imagined them, and I can’t help but feel like the scene is stilted because of that. I think I’ve talked about this part before, like with how I still think of something I’ve written as all the things I’ve cut in addition to what’s on the page, and how of course someone else reading the same thing wouldn’t see any of that.

But, at the same time, there are exceptions to this that I can’t define either. Like, sometimes I just… do well enough the first time around that I’m happy with that scene and I’m not sure why that might be. I could see it being related to chronological distance, maybe? Sometimes the idea for the scene will come up close enough to when I actually write it, or, better yet, I’ll have the idea as I’m getting to that point that I can just… start writing it. Maybe, in that case, it’s my insistence on writing things literally from start to finish that gets me in trouble; I have the interesting bits in my head but I can’t add them in yet (outside of some vague planning document) because even I haven’t gotten that far.

I have started to change this? With shorter works, mostly, or with shorter chunks of works. I don’t think I’m at the point where I can move around a planned outline with ease, but it is something I’m still working on. And I think that’s good? I sure hope it is.

-F

In the Middle

I’m at this point where there are so many things I know I should be writing about and yet I can’t find the words for any of them. Some of that is, like, hesitation, waiting until situations resolve themselves (hopefully for the better, and I have tried to do my part to make that happen) before tackling it and some of it is worry that a recap of the events just isn’t my story to tell. That’s why this post is late, by the way, and also why it’s probably unsatisfying as all get out to read.

I do have ideas for what I want to be saying and how, though. It’ll probably end up turning into something longer, in which case you probably won’t see it on this blog for a while, if at all. But I’ll keep you in the loop for it.

-F

Collab

Writing collaboratively is an interesting process, especially once you’ve gotten used to having it be a solo activity for so long. Some of it is just a loss of control with regards to certain aspects of the story. If you’re both pantsing (that is, “writing by the seat of your pants”) then not only do you not know where the story is going to end up, you might not even know what’s around the corner. Sometimes I find myself floundering, unsure of how I can guide any of the characters in a way that helps my writing partner.

In general, the same techniques used in improv have worked. The most quoted, “say ‘yes and’” has been a good enough baseline and I’m sure with experience, others will follow. The opposite end of the spectrum is also helpful, though. Having an outline and assigning bits and pieces, so long as people understand that outlines can change, can also end up being productive and gets rid of that fear of ruining plans.

I don’t pretend to be an expert in any of this. I’ve only recently started doing it as a way to keep social with some online friends. It’s a good way to stay accountable at the very least, and it has helped.

-F

More Thoughts About Spoilers

I don’t know how I got into this mindset, but whenever someone tells me something they might consider a spoiler, if I ever read or watch or play that thing they’re talking about, I assume they were lying? The first example that comes to mind is a narrative game called Firewatch, which has a twist that can come out of left field if you’re not prepared for it. And even then, after watching a video where someone mentioned it, I had a hard time piecing together just how it had happened while playing. Like, I knew, but I hadn’t accepted it yet.

Maybe it’s that I just don’t care? That seems like an elitist way to phrase it, though. “Oh, you shouldn’t care what other people say happens to these people” seems awfully mean to the people who do really care, and have good reasons for caring. That’s one of the points of media, after all, to provoke empathy. And it’s not like I made a conscious decision to ignore knowing the ending, it just sort of happened, if that makes sense.

In a way, I might compare this to what I talked about when I complained about biopics because those are kind of spoiled by default. People know what happens to Freddie Mercury, for example, just like how pop culture has made the initial genre shift of Psycho less effective. But both of these can be made up for with good elements elsewhere, compare Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and Gus Van Sant’s near-shot-for-shot remake and you’ll see what I mean.

This also ties in with a recent trend of creators feeling like they need to be smarter than the people they’re catering to. Westworld ran into this most directly -- series head Jonathan Nolan mentioned changing the twist of an episode because people on Reddit had already guessed the twist they’d been going for. And that seems like a weird way to be making something to me, just shoveling in twist after twist without a thought to cohesion.

The twist in Firewatch, upon reflection, is actually thematically cohesive with the rest of the work. I won’t talk about it here, but it does tie in with the game’s themes of coping with loneliness and dealing with familial issues. So maybe that’s why I didn’t mind knowing about it ahead of time. It seems difficult, to me, for something with a twist for a twist’s sake to have a similar effect, but those media will likely be hamstrung by the passage of time anyway. Once everyone knows what’s up, it’ll fade from the zeitgeist, never to be meaningfully talked about again.

-F

When I Can Do Everything, I Can't Do Anything

I’ve written about writer's block on this blog before, but what I didn’t mention as much was this age-old quandary: how hard is it to pick something with a swath of options in front of you? For example, imagine a menu with a seemingly limitless number of dishes, and you’re just staring at it unable to parse what any of the descriptions mean when the server comes up ready to take your order. Compare that to a similar scene but with only a few dishes on offer, which presents an easier decision.

Writing this blog is kind of like that, except the restaurant has a magical kitchen that can make anything you want, and you keep coming back week after week wanting to eat something different every time. It’s difficult to pare down the possibility space in that situation, even though, intuitively, each week reduces the possible choices by one.

This is what things like my Raindrops on Roses series are supposed to come in, reducing the options, but there are weeks I don’t really have it in me to write about what I like in the capacity that I feel these things deserve. So instead I just ramble on whatever topic and push it down the line. There are a couple solutions, and I’m trying some of them, but they haven’t started working just yet. Hopefully soon.

-F

Ah Yes Tuesdays Are Made For Blogs

A common observation in this day and age is that with all the chaos consuming the world, one of the most difficult things to remember is what day it is. Twitter accounts like @And_Dads_Car reminding people of specific days (Saturday, for this specific account) have comments under each post praising that, if it weren’t for them, they’d have no idea what day it was. And sure, some of these comments are probably facetious, but not only are there a lot of them, but I’ve seen similar events have happened in real life, too, so it’s not like I can’t believe this phenomenon doesn’t exist.

All that being said, it’s not something I’ve noticed in my own personal life, and for a while, I was struggling to explain why. Really, I think a part of it has to do with these blogs. Not exactly the act of blogging itself, but when I do it.

Here’s a bit of “how the sausage is made” for you, I don’t really write blogs in advance. Sure, I might think of a topic or two, or have a backlog of topics (I already have an idea of what I want to write about next week, for example), but I don’t really have too many notes in advance besides that. I’m a “pantser” one might say. And this isn’t the only writing project I keep assigned to a specific day -- there are multiple. With only one at max per day, it’s been much easier to think about things like, “Ah, today’s the day I write my blog” or whichever project it is. I’ve been keeping up this pattern for long enough that it just works now.

-F

Terraforming (Part Five): The End Is Never The End

You thought I was done with these posts, didn’t you? I mean, I described the end of Naviim in post three, and the only progression since then was talking a little bit about some odd supernatural element that had more of a timeless quality to it than anything. And even then, there was still a mention of the apocalypse.

Well, first of all, the worldbuilding process has never been particularly restrained by chronological order. A single element, such as, say, a pantheon of gods and the associated mythology, would use many points on the timeline, from the creation of the world to the eventual end of days. But that seems like an intuitive element of the process once you think about it for a moment. As a creator, you have the entirety of a realm’s history spread in front of you all at once, it wouldn’t make sense to go through things the same way your population would.

But the more interesting element that I want to talk about, one that I feel as if I’ve known for a while but only recently experienced in practice, is the lack of finality in anything. Not in a “you’re never finished, it’ll never be perfect” sort of way -- that’s just perfectionism -- but a “there’s always a ‘what comes next?’” And this seems a little antithetical to the first point, right? The previous paragraph was all about not simply going down the timeline and here I am now saying that you can, with the implication that you occasionally even should.

The resolution to this paradox is in the perspective and the size of the canvas, because the first point, in my mind, assumes a finite beginning, middle, and end, kind of like a story. The second point does conflict with this, but more in a “the canvas is infinite” sort of way. In my case, Naviim’s apocalypse wasn’t final. I mentioned a safe haven survivors could flock to. That could succeed or fail. The world could literally break apart and people could cling to the rocks and attempt to start anew. Until the universe is literally snuffed from existence, there will always be something going on.

-F

Ranking My Thoughts

I’ve been thinking a bit about Top X Lists. These are not to be confused with the “X things that will make you go, ‘whoa!’ Number Y will make you go, ‘gee whizz!’” lists that people associate with clickbait. That’s not to say that ranking things can’t be turned into clickbait -- there’s something authoritative about them that makes people crave either validation or something to be mad about -- but it seems like declaring something “best” or even “tenth best” has qualities to it even people who “take themselves seriously” seem to gravitate towards.

But at the same time, these people who take themselves seriously also, I think, find it the hardest to put together a self-respecting list? Like, I take movies seriously (though I wouldn’t call myself a critic or anything like that) and I still find it difficult to rank movies. I have to add some category on top of it, like “Top movies of 2019” or “Top 9 Best Picture nominees.” And yes, I understand there can be some methodology to these lists. Some places will poll multiple people in order to make a list in aggregate as if that’s any better than asking everyone in China how long the emperor’s nose is.

For the three lists I’ve made on this blog so far, I have to admit a little bit of not only recency bias but also interest in making a compelling list to read. I want there to be a decent mix of things people have heard of in case they haven’t seen them yet and also some unknowns. And when it comes to the unknowns, I mostly do it because I want to share these movies (this is the reason I tell people), but there’s also a bit of superiority in it. Like an “I’ve seen this thing and you haven’t” sort of feeling. I try to downplay it, but I can’t say it’s not there.

This sort of methodology does mean that a lesser-known movie is more likely to sneak onto a Top X list. That means it’s not really a Top X list at all, though. Because again, they present themselves as authoritative. These are meant to be “the best,” no matter if they are popular or not. But then I’m left with questioning why someone would even write such a thing. An objective piece (no critical analysis is objective but as something that wants to be speaking from a position of authority, Top X lists sure try to be) would mean a lack of need for anyone else to write one. We’d just consult the algorithm of rankings and that would be that. X is better than Y.

So maybe it is all just clickbait dressed all fancy and done by someone important. That seems like the far other end of the spectrum, though. Dismissing opinions on the internet that are written out like this simply for being opinions, or with a disingenuous word like “clickbait” seems a bit dangerous too. You can and should dismiss them for other reasons (being bad opinions is certainly at the top of the list there) but not that one.

-F

Writing Spots

I don’t actually write in the same place I live in all too often. During the late-night updates, sure, when there’s nowhere else to go, but I find it can be a little stifling to sit in the same spot every time I need to get words on a page. In fact, I’m writing these words from one of my preferred spots on campus. It’s well-lit, not too many people use it, and you can stay there as long as you want so long as you don’t bother anybody.

But I’ve also gone back and forth on starting a project involving some of the nearby parks, so I’ve been going there on occasion. And the library also works for a simple change of scenery. Or some other spots around town. Each place has its own pros and cons. Coffee shops, for example, are a good place but a lot of people know that so they can be crowded.

Even when I’m still at home, I’ve been trying to find good alternative places to be while writing. The porch works for short bursts of time, I’ve found, but longer sprees are out of the question. The seats in the kitchen are a little awkward but the rest of the area works really well.

I think changing up locations affects my mood and motivation a lot when I write. It’s probably the act of getting there that gets me thinking about the project ahead, a sort of preamble to the actual writing project. Not that I do anything else special -- I’m probably closer to a “pantser” than a “plotter” -- just the right frame of mind is enough to get me thinking.

-F

What We Talk About When We Talk About Work

I’ve noticed that the quantity of work-related posts has increased on this blog recently. I wouldn’t chalk that up to more things to talk (read: complain) about per se, though we are approaching a couple of major changes that are worth bringing up. The menu is going to be changing soon, we’re going to be handing out silverware soon, and I’ve been told the employee roster is going to change in a major way soon, though outside of some new hires I’ve yet to see anything there that is really that significant.

I don’t really talk about any of that because, well, it’s much more fun to complain about things. Like how the grill is broken or how coworkers can be a bit too nosy. It also keeps things a bit more universal in application. Everyone has nosy coworkers and appliances that refuse to work, or at least can sympathize with the idea of them. Less so the minutiae of silverware logistics; there are definitely fans out there, just fewer, I think.

Taking the complaining route also benefits because it’s simply a stronger emotional reaction, one of the few ones left once one gets into a working routine. It’s a moment of catharsis, excising frustrations because everyone has those.

I have talked about before, though, how I don’t want this blog to just be complaining about random things. There’s a danger to a wholly negative mindset, I think. It can bleed into not only the work one might be complaining about -- becoming the cause of complaints rather than relaying them onwards -- but also the rest of one’s life. That’s one of the reasons I started the Raindrops on Roses series, just to be nice to things on occasion.

So while I could talk at length about how, instead of replacing the grill, we now have a new dishwashing machine, I’m going to just leave it at half a sentence in a concluding paragraph. And next week? I don’t know yet, we’ll see. But it’ll hopefully be something a bit nicer.

-F

Things To Do Instead Of Writing A Blog Post

It’s an odd situation to find oneself in, only remembering a deadline you’ve set pretty hard for yourself only after the fact. But let’s not dwell too hard on the past and instead focus on things that could be done instead of focusing on deadlines -- the things I was doing instead.

1) Sleeping in! I do this especially after having to close at work, where I just sort of plow through the next morning and straight into the afternoon. There are a lot of other factors, especially in the summer when it’s less likely that I’ll have scheduled obligations in the morning, but it certainly happens.

2) Grocery Shopping! This kind of happens on a by-need basis. I guess that’s just what happens when there are two stores just down the street. This also means I tend to shop a little light. After all, I can always go back and buy more.

3) Seeing a Movie! I saw Meeting Gorbachev, a film by Werner Hertzog and Andre Singer exploring its titular subject over the course of three interviews. It’s an interesting watch, I think. Hertzog at this point is known for his narration and affect which translates well, and the subject matter is something I’ve been tangentially interested in (or interested in because people I know are interested in it). What the film doesn’t do, really, is display too much content from the interviews themselves, so if that’s what you’re looking for, I’d suggest steering away. If you’re looking for an (admittedly biased) overview of Cold War Russian history, though, this is a good one.

4) Cooking! People around me say I’m good at it but I’m not so sure. Like, I can, and it (mostly) tastes good, so I suppose if you call “anyone who cooks,” then yes, I’m a cook. But in terms of personal identity, I don’t know. I’ve never thought of myself as “a cook” even if I do the things a cook does on occasion.

5) Writing Other Things! I have other things! I can’t show you them yet (or, for some of them, ever (sorry!)), but I have talked about some of them in the past. For example, just last week I talked about a sort-of memetic lighthouse and that, well, that still hasn’t gone away. That’s kind of the point of it, really.

One does have to eventually buckle down and get back on schedule, though. That’s what this is for: a list of excuses and a promise to do better. And hey, if you go by the timezones on Blogspot -- a Pacific Time Zone company -- I technically wasn’t late just yet.

 I’ll see you next Tuesday, for real next time.

 -F

Voice Recording

I really don’t like listening back to the sound of my own voice. I have ideas of where that came from but nothing concrete enough to relegate here. To be honest, this seems like a common enough thing that it might just “be a thing”, that is, without a reason at all. But at the same time, I do like the act of recording myself?

Let me elaborate. Sometimes when I’m trying to outline something but I need to drive somewhere, I’ll open up a microphone app on my phone, toss it in the passenger’s seat, and head out, talking into my phone all the while. At the end, though, I just delete the recording. So really, it’s a useless gesture. But I can’t bring myself to talk in the same way without having it.

There are enough depictions of writers talking into recorders that I assume that part of the process is true to real life. But I’d liken what I do more to what programmers term “rubber ducking.” It’s a similar principle: you explain the problem with your code to a rubber duck, with the hope that the mere act of saying the problem out loud lets inspiration strike.

I frequently don’t remember all of what I say in these “rubber duck” car rides. More often than not, they’re 15-ish minutes of dead air and the occasional rambling punctuated by the sound of a turn signal. But the few moments of brilliance I do have, I think I hold on to pretty well. Whether that’s a single sentence or the skeleton of a plot point, that’s something I take and write down later, recording or no.

-F

What I Talk About When I Talk About Movies

I’m going to be honest, I’m not entirely sure what caused this, but I’m trying to think about how I’ve been evaluating the movies I’ve been seeing. When I started being a “movie person” (as a coworker of mine calls it), a lot of my opinions were based on other critical opinions. Whether that was just out of fear that my own opinions weren’t worth much at all or because I was putting way too much weight on what others say or even a mix of both, whichever it is, I realized it was a problem. And in an effort to fix that problem, I wanted to, well, I guess not exactly write down “how I’ll aim to in the future” but reflect on what I do like.

I’ve said stuff like this before, but I look for creative flourishes. To steal a quote from The Beginner’s Guide, “It reminds you this was made by a real person.” And yeah, that does get really close to auteur theory, which a lot of people consider an outdated model of thinking, but it’s not like I’m looking for touches by one single person. Anyone involved can make a film enjoyable. For example, the film The Man Who Killed Hitler And Then The Bigfoot is, mostly, kind of mediocre, but there’s one camera move when Sam Elliot says “...and this knife” that I thought was really really good. Again, the film isn’t that great, but if it had more things like that, I think it would be.

I’ve also found I have a weakness for neo-noir crime films. Destroyer is a good film, but I enjoyed it much more than I think the movie deserved. Does that make sense? Or Goldstone, which did something similar. And honestly, because the releases for these movies aren’t as big as the really big ones, it’s possible that there’s a little bit of “you haven’t seen this and I have” to it as well, but if it’s there, I think it’s minimal.

But those two paragraphs are at odds with each other, I think. The first one looks for technical performance, whether that be mastery of the film’s style (one of the reasons I liked Phantom Thread and some people didn’t), while the second one is emotion based. I don’t mean that they have to be at odds, but that’s often how it feels. The phrase, “I really liked that movie, but…” or something similar comes up a lot in my discussions, and there has to be a better way to say that because the “but” in that sentence feels like it dismisses the first half way too much.

I’m still learning. I tried earlier in the year to have a full review blog, and that fell through because of other commitments, but I still do talk about movies with friends and family. And like every other skill, it can only get better over time.

-F

Block

I’m really bad at dealing with writer’s block. That’s the primary reason I started this blog, after all, that and dealing with actually ending pieces I start. For the most part, the latter has since not really been an issue for me; I think last year’s Write What You Know is a good example of that, given the goals I had set out for it. But I don’t really feel the same way about that incessant issue that is the former.

Now, to be fair, it’s not like I haven’t tried the various cure-alls that circulate the internet. And a lot of them do work. A particular favorite of mine is the “do nothing but” approach where the author dedicates an amount of time to either writing or “doing nothing.” It’s one of the more extreme methods, I’ve found, and I don’t always have the willpower for it, but when I do manage it, I tend to enjoy the results. Another one is changing scenery, which I like not specifically because of the explicit change, but because of the time it takes to make it, giving me time to think about the approach I want to take on a piece.

Time is a key factor in both of those methods. Maybe that’s the reason that, despite knowing about them, I still feel I’m “really bad” at them. There’s still a part of me that wants some sort of magical solution that fixes my problem, even if the rest of me knows there never will be.

The word “angst” gets a bad rap, I think, though it’s not like it doesn’t deserve at least some of it. Being associated with terms like “dark”, “teenage”, and “brooding”, will do that to a word. But I still think it’s the best way to describe how I feel in this instance. “Writer’s block” might as well be “writer’s angst” for me. That’s why the most popular solution, “Do whatever it takes to get words onto a page” never seemed to work for me. There’s that niggling self-doubt that it’s never going to be good enough. So things get retread on and deleted or left open in a tab that I never seem to get back to no matter how many times I say I’m definitely going to finish that. There’s a whole hierarchy at the top of my browser screen for which projects need finishing first and which are just pieces of wishful thinking.

Am I spreading myself too thin? I never feel that I am, though maybe that’s because I just never go back and look at some of these tabs, so the fear of unfinished-ness never fully develops. I do get posts here finished on a regular basis, not to mention, you know, actual schoolwork. But there’s also the wonder of what happens when those deadlines are stripped away and I’m left with a blank Word doc and not much else.

-F

Late

Yeah, that promise to get a post out on Friday over at NSS Reviews didn’t really go so well, did it? There are excuses I could give, reasons that I only managed to get a review of Roma up four days after I said I would, but what I’d rather look at is my mentality going into that weekend.

I kind of alluded to this last week: there was always a “this is probably going to fail” mentality with regards to NSS Reviews. All the reasons it might have failed in my head haven’t happened yet, but I the fact that it was my opening mental state was probably not the right headspace to be in. There wasn’t a good solution to the obstacles that came up that particular Friday, but there certainly were opportunities between then and a few hours ago in regards to getting something, anything, written up.

Deadlines are important to me. I mean, they do make nice wooshing sounds as they fly by (thanks, Douglas Adams), but if they’re hard enough -- that is, if I’m not the only one holding myself to them -- then I can be disciplined enough to keep them. That’s why this blog has lasted as long as it has, my brother blog, Secret Asian Man and I have continued to trade off days and sometimes I get to lord it over him when he misses a day or two. And because I know how bad I get when that happens, I definitely don’t want that happening to me in return.

But on the other hand, I do like how my Roma review eventually turned out, and it’s certainly because of that extra time that I managed to put it together. I mean, I’m sure I’ll hate it eventually as I develop my structure and its flaws make themselves more apparent, but right now I’m happy with it. So I don’t know.

I’m still going to try for Friday, but hey, maybe a few days here or there won’t hurt anyone. But like I said last week, it’s always going to be Tuesday or bust over here.

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The Long And Short Of It

One of the lesser weaknesses I have in my writing is how I put titles on things. Now, I call it a “lesser weakness” because I know it doesn’t really matter and could probably be perennially ignored or put off until the rest of the work is finished, like, I didn’t have a good title for Write What You Know until I had nearly finished the thing. But there are other times where I flounder -- without a title to attach a central theme to, I sometimes lose track of what I was writing about.

One way I’ve found to get around this is to use longer titles. Generally, they’re just more detailed versions of what I would already use, often with an “or” stuck in there somewhere. For example, this post could easily have been titled: The Long And Short Of It (Or: How To Keep Focus When Every Other Method Fails You (And Yes, I’m Aware Of The Irony)).

That’s another thing that I like doing, actually. I like how titling things can add a little bit of humor to the proceedings. I don’t do it to things I need to seriously show other people. I don’t snark when writing a college paper on it but I did at one point have a paper with the concise title: Moving The Goalposts: Clarke’s Third Law Shows Its Age.

The closest I can think of for where I got the inspiration to do this is Kurt Vonnegut, with such classic either/or titles like Slaughterhouse Five Or: The Children’s Crusade and God Bless You Mr. Rosewater Or: Pearls Before Swine. Or maybe my inspiration is closer to Philip K. Dick who graced us with such titles as Doctor Bloodmoney, Or How We Got Along After The Bomb and Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said. Obviously, I’m not trying to compare myself to these authors in any more than a superficial level, but that is where I got the idea. Probably.

I don’t know if there’s a conclusion here. Like, this post was more of a reflection on a thing I do, and I’m not going to keep doing it (or the other way, doing it more) just because I wrote 404 words about it. But I did want to write it in case longer titles do start showing up in these posts. So I guess be on the lookout for that? No promises, though.

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A Follow-Up

With better planning, this would have been last week’s topic, but there were ah, more pressing issues. Though, to be fair, this also gave me a bit more time to reflect on the writing experience. This is something I actually don’t get to talk about much. Normally all my fictional pieces go through the college workshop-level process, where authors are specifically not allowed to talk about their work.

So now, two weeks later, let’s talk a little bit more about Write What You Know.

One of the things I didn’t mention in my Raindrops on Roses post on creepypasta was how enamored I am with their structure. It’s a basic structure, sure, but I think that’s why it’s so easy to copy down and use. While The Hero’s Journey is used to mold longer stories, all a shorter story like a creepypasta needs is a series of spooks that slowly escalate, and an optional denouement at the end.

I knew I wanted to write a Halloween-y story for this blog, if only to prove that I could. That’s a feeling I get sometimes, often when a story has a false start and I end up dropping it. I started this blog for the same reason, to give another example of this. The next step, of course, was the subject matter.

I do have older false starts of horror stories, mostly involving weird sounds that keep showing up around me. Spotify glitching out was the one that I had actually part of an introduction written for but there was also this weird hum at work that I obsessed over for about a week before dismissing it as “worth noting, but maybe not worth writing more than a sentence or two about” (oh hey!).

But what I also have is a bunch of stories about “Nancy.” The “Finlay story” was the most memorable, and it took a little memory digging to find the other ones, but I mean, those aren’t that scary by themselves. Like, I’m fine now. I’m fine.

I’m fine.

So then all I needed was a conceit, and that one I concede I was a little less creative on. Demons and blood and pentagrams and all that are kind of cliche in creepypasta, but I mean, I have to convince people that my English teacher is a demon spawn somehow, right? The point was, these stories I had were the type.

The climax, of course, is where things diverge from reality. At some point, you just need to creep people out, real life be damned. I’m reminded of this line from Adaptation.:

“The last act makes a film. Wow them in the end and you’ve got a hit. You can have flaws, problems, but wow them in the end, and you’ve got a hit.”

So yeah! I had a lot of fun writing it, stringing events together like I did, and I do hope that everybody enjoyed reading it. Unless being scared isn’t your thing, in which case I do apologize. But I’d also want to know what you were expecting the day before Halloween.

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