Category Archives: guidelines

all we wanna do is share

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isn’t that the point? As writers, singers, actors, musicians—all we wanna do is share what we feel, what’s going on in our heads, what we feel that can’t be expressed in any other way.

I was just watching Smash, and this girl got up and started singing in the middle of this crowded room at a party. Everyone gathered around and was listening and nodding their heads. Obviously this is just a show, and they’re actors, but that’s not the point.

p159-1-jpgThey’re doing that because that’s what real people would do. At least, that’s what I’d do. When I see someone expressing that ineffable thing inside, a street artist making a painting, a musician in a crowded subway, just someone putting themselves out there and exposing that raw, tingling nerve that vibrates to that unknown chord of humanity that we all share.

It’s something magical, and it’s something we all have, and that’s what so wonderful. I love that. I love sharing that. I love feeling it. What an incredible gift we have, to be able to share that feeling, or even just a tiny piece of it, with others. To make others hear that singing that only we hear, to see the colours that only we see, to live in the world that only we know about.

Hold Fast, Young Fellows

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Last day of January! That’s exciting, I think. I’ve become resolute in my determination to maintain better writing habits, and so far it’s been paying off. There’s seldom enough time in the day to do all the nothing I’d like to do, but mornings I wake up earlier and work on this site, five days a week, and evenings after work is novel writing time. The novel is a beast, but it’s always worse imagining working on it than it is actually working on it.

There’s something dreadful about sitting down in the chair and contemplating opening up that word document, scrolling down and having a staring contest with that blinking icon. What will the first word today be?

Well, there’s a trick I’ve found, and that’s going back and doing a little editing of the work you did yesterday. That way you’ve already started writing by the time you start writing. You’re already warmed up and you’ve found your place again. It seems to work pretty well.

I was reading an article about the daily routines of famous writers. You can find it here. It’s definitely worth looking at. Some people have some pretty strange habits, such as Jack Kerouac doing bizarre yoga positions before he wrote, or Hemingway‘s famous habit of standing up while he writes.

Yet there was a common theme among all of them that I found reassuring. The most important habit to cultivate as a writer is to write. Write first, last, and foremost. Nothing else is more important. You must write, and you must continue to write until you are done. Then you should probably keep writing some more.

Friends, family, dates, games, movies, social outings, lunch with colleagues—they must all take a back seat to your writing. This isn’t to say you must do nothing else besides write. But your writing must not be neglected or postponed for anything. Whether you’re in the mood or not, you must write.

Hemingway in Cuba

Hemingway in Cuba

And it makes sense. If you were a professional in some occupation, and you may well be, you couldn’t call and tell your office you weren’t coming in because you found this awesome new website full of hilarious cats and you want to look at it for a while before you do work (I can’t be the only one for whom this is a problem). You wouldn’t tell them you’re going on a date with your girlfriend this afternoon so you won’t be able to make that deadline. No, work comes first.

I’m not sure why this is such a difficult task for us to grasp as writers. Or at least, it is for me. Deadlines as a self-motivated writer are such soft, fuzzy things. I’m reminded of Jack Sparrow, I like to set deadlines, I like to wave at them as they pass by.

In any case, it’s comforting knowing what you need to do to accomplish something. Writing a book is hard, extremely hard. But hearing all the best writers that have ever been say the same thing, well, you start to get an idea of what needs to be done. I leave you with a wonderful quote from Hemingway, and I feel like it sums up the romance, charm, and hard work necessary to be successful as a writer.

When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again. You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that. When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.

 

 

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One Lego at a Time

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So there’s this book called “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life,” by Anne Lamott, and it’s fantastic. I highly recommend picking it up, if only for the anecdotal stories. Anne is a brilliant writer with a calm, engaging style that makes her advice all the more resonant. She’s someone who “gets” what being a writer is all about. And why shouldn’t she? As I was reading it last night, I kept nodding thinking yes, yes, this is exactly what it’s like.

“…as the panic mounts and the jungle drums begin beating and I realize that the well has run dry and that my future is behind me and I’m going to have to get a job only I’m completely unemployable…”

I don’t think you can really say you’re a writer unless you sit there night after night and wonder what you’re doing with your life, where your degree has gone, and how you’re going to pay the bills. If there isn’t some anxiety building in the back of your mind as to whether or not you’re going to make it and oh-my-god-what-will-the-world-think-of-me, you simply aren’t putting your heart into it.

490d9dfb26a34e8914d017dc7835084e-d5r4gsgI think we’ve all been there. It’s terrifying, but that gives us fuel. At least, it does for me. I reminds me that the only thing that can pull me through is myself, and I know I’ve got my back. Anne suggests that all you have to do is write enough to fill one little picture frame.

When you sit down to write, all you have to do is tell enough to describe what you can see inside that little picture frame. Just that much, that’s all. So it’s not insurmountable, you aren’t climbing Everest, you’re just going for a walk. You’re stretching your legs, seeing what the world looks like today. It’s not scary, it’s exciting. And yeah, it’s often a matter of viewpoint, you can definitely psych yourself out and into a place where you can’t write. So relax.

“E. L. Doctorow once said that ‘writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.’ You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your des­tination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice about writing, or life, I have ever heard.”

And I have to agree. Which is difficult when you’re writing an epic space opera novel, but it’s still true. It builds up piece by piece, bit by bit, until you’re there. It’s the old brick by brick analogy. When I was a kid, I loved to play with Legos. I remember one day they were scattered all over my room from a great afternoon of castle building, and my mom told me it was time to go and I had to clean up. I looked around the room and was completely overwhelmed. How could I possibly clean up all of those Legos? I tried picking them up one at a time and putting them into the bucket, and I realised it would take me forever.

My mom laughed and showed me how to start in sections and scoop the Legos up into big piles, then dump them into the bucket that way. I was done in no time, and it changed how I approached room cleaning and Legos and life forever. Don’t sweat the small stuff with your writing. It’ll come together, I promise. Just put the words down on the page, let it flow, and you can clean up the mess later. It’s far easier to let it flow than it is to tug it forcefully out of yourself, striving for that right word or phrase. That’ll come later. Just get the ideas out and down and move on.  Don’t be afraid to write badly, you’ll know the difference afterwards far better than you will in the heat of the creative moment.

In any case, I suppose all this is just a little pep talk for myself, really. Keep going, keep it up, and don’t worry what it’s all mounting towards. If you put in the effort, the time, and your heart is in it, you’ll succeed. And why wouldn’t your heart be in it? You’re writing because you want to, right? No one’s making you. So have no fear. Your story will be told, even if you have to drive all night through the fog with only a few feet of visibility and no idea where you’re going. You’ll get there.

The Next Post

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I’m having a heck of a time getting back into the swing of novel writing. I’ve done alright getting back into this site, but writing on here is so much easier than novel writing, for obvious reasons. There’s no plot here. I can say whatever comes to mind, and generally it turns out ok.

There are so many distractions to being productive however. If I take a look at the environments of some of my favourite authors, I’m embarrassed by how comfortably I live and how easy writing a novel these days should be. There was a famous story by Jack London called “Martin Eden“, which, if you haven’t read, go and do that right now. It’s phenomenal, and if it doesn’t motivate you to work harder, I don’t know what will.

Jack London

Jack London

In the story however, there’s this young guy who decides he wants to be an author. He works his ass off, doing jobs I wouldn’t wish on my enemies for practically pennies a day so he can afford to live in a cramped studio above a laundromat sleeping four hours a day and writing and reading the other twenty.

He works for six months at a time, going out to sea to be a deckhand on a sailing ship, or working for a hotel in the laundry room cleaning the linens of the guests, which he compares to working in hell. He saves up, then lives on the savings and writes all day, going into huge debt just renting a typewriter so he can work.

He eventually makes it after several years, but that’s not the point. When I consider what he would do if he were in my situation—with the ability to write on a computer, in a comfortable room, and with tons of free time, I feel pretty guilty that I haven’t done more by this point. I suppose we’re all victims of our day and age and upbringing, but I’d like to think I’m capable of working just as hard as Martin Eden.

The culprits are all around us, and people have been harping on them for years. TV, internet, phones, etc. The trick is figuring out a way to do work in spite of these things. There’s something called the “Pomodoro Technique” I recently learned of, and it’s actually quite simple. It involves a regular old kitchen timer and some self motivation. Turn the timer to 25 minutes, and do your work during that time. 25 minutes, that’s all. Then you get a five minute break, start again. If you get interrupted with a phone call or a friend or your cat you have to start over.

I haven’t tried it yet, but I think I’ll start tonight. I’d really like to say with confidence that I’m working on this book as hard as I can, and if I can find a trick or two to make that happen, all the better.

Work’s a Beach

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“The way to be happy is to find something that requires the kind of perfection that’s impossible to achieve and spend the rest of your life trying to achieve it.” ~ Winston Churchill

I like beginning these with quotes. I love quotes. They are brilliant ideas from brilliant people captured in easily digestible little nuggets.

And who better to quote than Winston Churchill? I really like message here, and it’s particularly meaningful to artists who must create something, because that creation often falls short of our vision.

a_diamond_in_the_rough_by_erezmarom-d4yl4nhWhen I’m writing, there’s always the nagging feeling that I’ve got the gist of what I’m trying to say, but the full magnitude is always just out of reach. I suppose if I nailed it every time, there’d be nothing to continue to strive towards, and that would make the whole enterprise rather dull. It’s the chase, as always, that keeps us coming back for more.

But don’t let that stop you from trying. Perfectionism can be a double edged sword, and if you let the fear of failure prevent you from succeeding, you’ll never know the joy of seeing your vision realised. It’s healthy to strive for that perfect ideal, but never let that get in the way of your accomplishments. It’s something I must frequently remind myself of, I’m seldom content with what I’ve created at the time. But if I step away from the keyboard and take some time to reflect, what I’ve created usually surprises me.

Give yourself a chance to breathe, and you’ll probably discover that your work takes a life of its own. It may not be what you had envisioned, but that random growth and chance gives your work an unexpected life and vitality. Learn to celebrate this, not fight it, and you can still strive for that perfection that drives your passion without hindering your own work.

The happiness we find in creating will never dim, and it’s important to remember that this is why we create, not to be perfect, but because bringing something out of our minds and into the world is a joyous process. Never let critics, or worse, your own idealism, stop you from unleashing yourself upon your work.

The New Writer

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Jon Katz over at Bedlam Farm posted an interesting article about the new world of writing. It seems like everyone these days, including myself, is struggling with the idea of what the writing world is becoming. As writers—i.e., people who subsist on attracting the attention of others—changing media formats can be a frightening prospect. We live and die by our exposure to our target audiences. When the nature of that exposure diminishes or is reformatted, we struggle to keep ahead of the curve.

Bring me that horizon

Bring me that horizon

Jon Katz says that the new writer will no longer be a sequestered, attic-dwelling hermit living off publisher’s advances and refusing to participate in the outside world. The new writer is someone who actively engages the world, running websites, hosting events, coordinating with Facebook and Twitter and tumblr and all the rest of them and beating down doors to sell copies of his book. It sounds manic, and I’m not entirely looking forward to it. But that’s mostly because it’s unexplored territory and there’s nothing in my experience to guide me through it. It’s all guesswork. Will this work? Will that work?

Try it and find out.

There’s nothing I’d rather be doing than writing, but it’s a little scary at times. There’s no sure outcome, but I suppose that’s true for almost everything. You make your way, you get through it, and you come out the other side with some lessons. My hurdle at the moment is not only writing my book, but developing my online presence. I’m learning the tools to do that, and it’s a tricky but rewarding journey. Seeing followers slowly accumulate and meeting people and making contacts is definitely a huge incentive to keep going. There’s nothing more pleasing as a writer than finding people who are interested in your work and want to know more about what you’re doing.

So here we go! I will do this as long as I can, and I will enjoy every step of it. Even the rejections are a step forward, because if you’re smart you learn from it. Only the prospect of failure is intimidating, but I feel oddly convinced that when it comes down to it, that really isn’t a possibility. I believe in what I’m doing, and I feel certain that with passion and dedication there will be reward.

The Meat and Potatoes of Stars

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I came across another enlightening post by the wonderful artist Robert Genn. He’s a Canadian painter with an incredible talent for observation that I find very inspiring. You can check out his website here, along with his posts that he updates with questions and thoughts he gets from readers.

In his article I read today, he talks about what it takes to fire the spark of creativity. Some people are born with a natural creative bent, with a talent towards the fantastic, but for others it’s more challenging. Genn proposes that this talent needn’t be something you’re born with, that it can be learned. I definitely agree.

the meat and potatoes of stars

the meat and potatoes of stars

He suggests in his post that the fire we feel when we create is something that can be drawn out, provoked in a word. The secret to this lies simply in observation. You can’t fuel your imagination on an empty mind, so to speak. The mind needs input to create, it craves it. “Knowledge breeds knowledge, as gold gold,” as Edgar Allan Poe once said. So feed your mind!

This goes beyond simply reading books and exposing yourself to art. This involves seeing the world around you, experiencing it with open eyes, like you did when you were a child, as Genn says. Absorb everything, pay attention to what is happening around you. Don’t take things for granted.

One of my lifelong adages is simply, “Look up”. When I was a freshman at university, I lived on the fourth floor of my dormitory. I took out the window screens and would open the windows wide, and I would sit there, sometimes for hours, just watching everything below. I noticed something though. People would walk around, reading books or looking at their phones or simply walk past with their hands in their pockets, heads down, oblivious to the world. But no one ever saw me sitting there in the window. No one looked up.

I thought that was sad, and very telling of our condition as humans and creatures of familiarity and habit. So I always remind myself to simply “look up”. See what’s around, take stock of your environment, ask questions. Don’t take anything for granted, as much as it’s possible. Robert Genn says to approach the world agnostically, see everything fresh and try to believe that there’s something more than what you see.

Just be aware. There’s another one of my favourite zen koans that tells a story about a monk who visits a famous zen teacher. When he arrives at his house it’s raining outside, so he removes his shoes and umbrella and leaves them at the door. When he sits down inside with the zen teacher, the teacher asks him on which side of the door he left his umbrella and shoes. The monk realises he cannot answer, and his teacher tells him he must practise his “every minute zen”—his every minute awareness of what he is doing.

It’s a wonderful lesson. Practise your every minute zen, as a writer or painter or musician—just as a conscious, living, breathing human. That’s where inspiration begins—when you look closely, even stars are driven by the tiniest of movements. Yet those movements build to astronomical scales, and so does our work. Be always aware of what is happening around you, and you will find that you are constantly inspired by all the strange things that happen every day, every minute in our world.

Of Mice, Cookie Jars, and Comedians

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In case you’re wondering where I’ve been (you don’t spend your days combing through the archives?), I’ve been buried deep in my book. I almost made that crazy deadline I set for myself, though I did get some other stuff done, and now I’ve got my nose to the grindstone and am trying to make this happen. No news to report, as of yet, though I’m going to start the writing for the day in a few minutes and I have a sneaking suspicion today might be the day I finish that part I’ve been working on for so long. I can’t reveal anything, but it’s big. Pivotal. Not the apex of the story, but certainly the part where it all “begins”. Hmmm. Maybe I should’ve started here 80,000 words ago? Well, we’ll see.

Believe me, I’ve seen worse

In any case, I wanted to impart a little wisdom today to whet your writing appetite. Jerry Seinfeld, of all people, had some interesting things to say on the topic, and it seems that he—as well as Frank Herbert, Jack London, and Neil Gaiman, all agree: just sit down and do it. “This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It’s that easy, and that hard,” Gaiman said, and I think he knows what he’s talking about. 

It doesn’t matter how you do it, just do it. Seinfeld actually tricked himself into writing, stashing cookies in his notebook. “An hour a day. That was my first goal. Ten hours a month. That’s not easy for someone starting out, and it took me a couple of years to accomplish. Sometimes I had to trick myself to get my­self to write. You wouldn’t believe the things I had to do to get myself to write. Sometimes I’d put the cookies by my notebook. It’s like a mousetrap — I go get the cookies, then I look in the note­book, and the next thing I know, I’m writing.“

It’s encouraging to know that even for someone as wildly talented and successful as Jerry Seinfeld, writing was a struggle. Self discipline is about the hardest thing to muster up I’ve ever come across, and sometimes looking at my computer chair is like contemplating a coffin–confining, restricting. But the point is, he did it. And I’m doing it, and everyone has done it. Well, everyone who amounted to anything. So you can to. It’s a hard thing to learn but it must be done if you want to pursue your dreams. Anyone can go into an office and have someone tell them what to do. That’s real, those consequences are tangible. But if you skip your writing session for a day? A week? Who will know? Who will care?

You will, and you owe it to yourself and everyone who will eventually read your work to get it done. This may sound like a stern lecture, but I’m also talking to myself. It’s important to be reminded how essential a good work ethic is, and how much of getting a book written is just sitting down and doing it. It’s not magic, it’s just work. But don’t despair, you’re in good company. I find I’m rather like George R. R. Martin in that respect when he said, “Some writers enjoy writing, I am told. Not me. I enjoy having written.” Absolutely. I enjoy having written. But to get there, you have to write.

There, I feel better. Well, off to get some writing done! Have a good one folks, I’ll catch up with you soon.

Give Up Sleep

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“For those many among us who would aim toward quality, there are standards. Performance in fine art is also measurable. For what it’s worth, here’s some moxie: Be a perennial student. Know what “brilliant” looks like. Be a discriminating connoisseur. Be both passionate and particular. Destroy your substandard work. Determine your own laws. Give up sleep.” ~ Robert Genn

Robert Genn is a Canadian artist of some renown, and his words here strike a particular chord with me. In a post today on his website The Painter’s Keys  he talks about a phenomenon known as “inner authority”. It’s a new term for a growing trend among burgeoning artists to disregard the conventions and traditions and standards of the past in favour of their own sense of worth and entitlement. What was once a discerning medium, such as fine art, has been paved over by artists (writers and musicians included) who are looking for a quick fix to get famous. They decry they old standards as tedious and lumbering, and designate themselves as avant-garde and new-age, and if you don’t get their work, you’re shouted down and told you just don’t have the eye for it.

Well, poppycock.

you aren’t alone

The great John Simon went into the topic at some length during an interview with Jon Winokur, in which he described the degradation of modern art, comparing it to something a child might produce. This is certainly true for modern authors, where the average adult reading level is roughly that of a sixth grader. How can the mind bending prose of London and Conrad compete with a modern attention span? Improving yourself, creating something worthwhile is a herculean effort that, as Robert Genn suggests, should be a perennial task. Cristian Mihai questions what the nature of art is, exactly, in his blog here. He asks if an artist simply calling his work “art” is enough for something to be art. It’s an eternal question, but perhaps “art” and “good art” are more easily distinguishable. Maybe this is the real question. But how to define it?

In my previous post about Lena Dunham‘s new found success as an author, I give a perfect example of a person with an aptitude for giving the people what they want, supplanting innumerous works of quality. The only real consolation is the thought that something meaningful, worthwhile and intelligent will at least have a quality of endurance about it. I’m pretty sure that long after Miss Dunham has died and is forgotten, high schoolers will still be reading Dickens and George Orwell. It just doesn’t do us struggling artists much good to hope for fame after death.

The only advice I have, the same that I keep telling myself, is that if something is good enough, it will shine through. Destroy your substandard work, as Genn says. Put out only your best, no matter what it is. Don’t take the quick and easy route and make shortcuts for yourself or refuse to accept criticism because you think that nobody “gets” what you’re about. No. Tear it down, break apart what you’ve down, be open to critique and accept that you aren’t the next Faulkner. You may be good, but you aren’t impervious to error, and once you accept that, you’ll begin the road towards making some truly great art.

Procrastination By Working

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This was an interesting article I came across today on Linkedin. It summarises my general attitude towards any task that must, needs to, absolutely has to get done. Usually that’s working on my book. I’m not sure why working on my book has evolved into such a tedious chore, but it has, and it’s one I’ll put off on almost any excuse. Usually I can make myself feel better about it simply by updating my blog here: that’s writing, right? Yes, but as Gretchen says, it’s not the right kind of writing. And I know that. Deep down inside, I know that. But I push it to the back of my mind and accomplish thirty other things, just so I can forgive myself for not doing what I know I need to.

This relates back to my previous post “Don’t Be A Draught Horse” where Henry Miller states that you must always write first. Nothing comes before that. Well, I let it. And I try not to feel to bad about that, because usually it’s sending out job applications, practising my violin, drawing, reading, studying German, or any number of other cultivating activities. But they aren’t writing, and they don’t add up when I anxiously notice the page count of my novel hasn’t grown in weeks.

No excuses. Sit down, do the work, and shut up. Like Frank Herbert said, some days I’d rather be out for a walk, or swimming, or sharpening pencils. But you’re not killing the goose here, you’re just producing the egg. Don’t sweat it, you’ll survive the ordeal of writing your novel, and you’ll come out the other side with something wonderful.

EDIT: After reading some feedback, I think it might be important to add that I love writing. I wouldn’t want to do anything else, and there is nothing in the world so satisfying as creating something and watching it grow. It isn’t the writing that gives me pause, it’s the sheer amount of work that is required to make this book a reality. Like any profession, writing is work too, and even if you enjoy doing it, there are still times when the headache and frustration can be overwhelming. But that doesn’t detract at all from the pleasure I find in sitting down and pouring my thoughts and dreams out onto the page. There is nothing I’ve found quite like the joy of writing, and even if I get bogged down and am overcome with uncertainty, it’s part of the process and makes the reward of finishing a great chapter that much more gratifying.