March Word Count: 4200 (800 short of daily goal)

I’ve been meaning to post something about this since November.  I’ve been thinking about it a lot the last couple of weeks, and some recent conversations have brought it to the forefront of my mind.

I need to get better at taking criticism.  This mostly applies to writing, but it feeds into other parts of my life, too.

My greatest problem is how much I associate my self-worth with my work.  I pour myself into it.  This means that I’m passionate about it, and I really give it my all.  It also means that when I put my work in front of someone else, I’m exposed and vulnerable.

At ConVolution, I was exceptionally nervous.  I felt a little bit of nausea before the workshop met up, and I was a gibbering mess on the inside, when it got to my turn.  As each person spoke, I listened as best I could, while at the same time I was thinking, “Don’t be that guy… don’t be that guy…” When it was time for me to ask questions for clarification, I couldn’t really say much.  I said that I agreed with everything that was said, and I thanked everyone for the feedback.  I might have asked a question, but I don’t remember.  I was still trying to keep myself together.

That was probably the best I’ve done, and it was harrowing.  Since then, I’ve relaxed a little bit, but that hasn’t necessarily been good.

The time before last when the Auspicious NorCal Writer’s group met up, we reviewed a couple of chapters of my Mel Walker story, and I did not handle it well.  I had a very bad reaction to it, and I wound up creating some drama in the group.

The last time we met, my work received a very mild review.  That would be okay, except that my story was terrible.  It had pacing problems.  It had plot problems.  It was gimmicky.

I need to know when my stories don’t work, but at the same time, I need to not take the criticism so hard that my ego and self-confidence take a tumble.

Part of what’s keeping me going is a belief that I am a good writer.  It’s tenuous, though, because I don’t have any real successes that I can hang my hat on.

The only way I’m going to get better at receiving critiques is through additional trial and error.   It’s like writing itself.  If you want to improve, you have to do it, and not just talk about it.  Hopefully I haven’t broken things beyond repair with the Auspicious group.

To make the most the critiques, I think I need to provide some guidance.  When I was first asked what sort of critiques I wanted, I said, “Whatever is in your heart.” That was my answer, because I didn’t know what I wanted.  I have a slightly better set of guidelines, now.

• If something doesn’t work, I want to know that it doesn’t work.
• If something is good, I really want to know that it is good.  But I don’t want this fudged.  It needs to be genuine, if I’m going to be able to use this to improve.
• I am not receptive to someone telling me how they would write my story.  This is not meant to be bitchy.  I bring this up to address my own idiosyncrasies.  When someone else tells me how they would write my story, I hear, “You’re not good enough to write this on your own, let me help you.” This is my kryptonite.
• If we’re looking at a first draft, bear in mind that it is a first draft.  Applying analysis at a high depth might be useful, but it also might be a waste of time for everyone involved.

I think these guidelines will probably help safeguard me against myself.  There are probably other guidelines that I haven’t thought of yet, but I’m only going to learn them through continued efforts.

I finished the Prelude of A Clean Slate tonight.  I edited what I’d done last week, and I wrote a little more than 700 words.  It’s more than last week, though still less than I’d like to be adding in a writing session.

I want to talk for a moment about writing sessions.  Specifically, Wednesday evenings.

I said in my last post that I’m going to post word counts here, and I meant it.  Unfortunately, I haven’t had any word counts to post until tonight.  That’s been one of the great things about having a set night: no matter what else is going on in my life, I’ve got this block of time set aside for writing, and I haven’t wavered.  I’ve been keeping my weekly writing appointment.

Having Michael present has helped.  It’s like having a work-out buddy.  We don’t usually talk much about what we’re writing, but just having a buddy there to help keep me honest is invaluable.

For the foreseeable future, Wednesday evenings won’t be available for Michael.  I found out just before driving out to Starbuck’s tonight, and I wanted to cry.  Michael’s going to be teaching writing.  I’m really happy for him, and I think it’s going to be good for him, just as teaching programming has been good for me.  But it is a change, and all of the crazy, neurotic fears I have around writing pressed against my defenses when I heard the news.

If scheduling doesn’t work out, and we’re not able to keep meeting, will I be able to keep going on my own?

The answer is: “Yes, of course.” Actually, that’s the abbreviated answer.  The full answer is, “Yes, of course.  Quit being a melodramatic idiot, Brian.  Write more than once a week, and it won’t be a problem.”

When I ask myself these questions, I can be both wise and a dick at the same time.

I’ll keep writing.  It’s just going to be a little bit harder.

I think I’m going to commit to my March plan.  31,000 words in 31 days.  A mini NaNoWriMo.  Anyone want to join me?  If one writing buddy was good, how much better would it be to have many writing buddies?

I’m about to pack up and leave Starbuck’s, and I feel pretty good.

Ever since I tried to reread A Clean Slate, I’ve been dreading the idea of starting again.  I knew that it was necessary.  The previous incarnation was bad enough that any attempt to fix it was going to be a complete rewrite.  It is easier and quicker just to dump the previous prose and start fresh.  Start A Clean Slate with a clean slate.

It wasn’t easy.  I managed to put it off last week by doing a bunch of outlining.  The outlining was necessary, but it also felt like I was procrastinating.  It felt like I was putting the scary part off for another day.

Why is it so scary?  Why does a brand new document fill me with so much dread?  It’s fear, for sure.  But why must I torture myself with all of this fear before I’ve even started?

I opened the new document tonight, selected the manuscript template, and filled in my name and the title of the story.  Then I procrastinated a little bit more, by taking to twitter and participating in #GenreChat.

Opening the new document was like riding a roller coaster to the very top, where everything slows down before the mad rush.  All of the anticipation is there, as well as the fear of crashing and burning.

#GenreChat finished, and I took the plunge.  I started slowly, picking up a little bit more speed as the setting started to solidify in my mind.  It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t torturous, either.  Self-doubt tells me that it might be torturous to my readers, but to hell with self-doubt.

I’m a little more than 500 words into the prelude, and that seems pretty good for now.  It’s a start.  More importantly, it’s another place where I faced my fears head-on and succeeded.

Tonight was a good night.

This weekend I attended Dundracon.  It was the first one I’d been to since ’98.  It was at the same hotel, and used the same rooms.  When I attended DundraCon before, I was a lot younger, and much hungrier for games.  Also, my trips to DundraCon were as much about seeing my friend David as they were about roleplaying games.

I expected to be one of the older guys this year.  Twenty years ago, I remember everyone being roughly my age, with a handful of older guys joining in games.  I thought I was going to be one of those older guys.  Instead, most everyone was… my age.  There were younger folk in attendance, but I didn’t feel like I was out of place.

How did I enjoy the con?  Well, I only played in two games.  I think that if I’d stayed in the hotel, I might have tried to participate more.  Since the con was only about an hour and a half away, I slept in my bed each night.

I think I wasn’t really in the mood.  I still love roleplaying games, but I found that I didn’t have a lot of patience.  Both games I played in had players that really got on my nerves.  They were fine people, and I was as nice to them as I could muster, but there wasn’t much compatibility between the way we gamed.  I’m in it for the collaborative story telling and the character development.  I’m not sure what these other folk were interested in.  Something different.

It was good playing with Pol and Dael, though.  I haven’t played with them in ages.

I was hoping that the long weekend would quiet my inner monster, which has been growling and snarling and pumping acid through my veins.  I’ve been impatient with everything and everyone.  I’ve been having difficulty finding enjoyment in anything.  Writing has been a real struggle.

I read this post by Setsu that suggests that I should find some creative outlet to sooth my strife.  That sounds easier said than done.  I also read this post by Emma Newman where Emma talks about her own inner monsters, and it mirrors the sort of things I’ve been feeling.  Both posts offer interesting insights and opposing action items.  If I follow Setsu’s path, I will grit my teeth and pour myself into my writing until I feel better.  If I follow Emma’s path, I will take a deep breath, relax, and try not to stress myself out while allowing myself time to recharge.

Both arguments appeal to me.  I pushed myself very hard for a protracted period of time.  It might not be that good for me to push myself with my writing.  On the other hand, I haven’t done that much writing, and achieving some success in getting some words on the page might lift my spirits and chase the monsters away.

The night’s still young.  I have time to figure out what I’m going to do.  Tomorrow I’m writing for sure.  Tonight?  We’ll just have to see.

I’ve heard writers described in two different terms:

Pantsers — These are people that write “by the seat of their pants.” They write by discovery.  They’ll craft a strong character and just follow wherever that character will lead them, enjoying the journey as they go.  If they sit down and try to plot everything out in advance, it spoils the story for them, and they don’t enjoy writing it as much.  I’ve known lots of writers that identify in this way.  By his own admission, Dean Wesley Smith is in this category.

Plotters — These people plan everything out in advance.  They create outlines, iterating over their plot diagram to fill in each gap with greater and greater detail.  They are uncomfortable with not knowing where they’re going, and some might scoff at the notion of the character “taking over.” They’re methodical.  I’ve known several writers that fall into this category, too.  Jennifer Brozak describes herself as a plotter.

I used to identify myself as more of a pantser.  When I’d sit down to write, it felt like I was reading, only the words were appearing as if by magic beneath my eyes.  My Arthur Kane stories were written that way, and all of the time I spent on Star Wars MUSH was like that.  My writing process for my last two short stories involved very little plotting in advance.

As I’ve matured, I’ve noticed that the “seat of my pants” approach doesn’t actually work that well for me anymore.  The short stories might be an exception, except that even with those, I gave them a lot of thought in advance before sitting down and putting my hands on the keyboard.  They were short enough that I could do all of the plotting in advance and keep it in my head.

Longer stories, on the other hand, I have to plot out now.  That’s what I spent most of my night doing last night.  I sat in the Starbucks with OneNote open and stylus in hand, and I started listing all of the plot points I want to cover in the first act of A Clean Slate.  I was breaking it down into chapters, and highlighting my purpose for each part of the story.

My process for the Mel Walker story was a little bit different.  I didn’t have the time to plot everything.  I knew how I wanted to start, and I knew the character and some of the things I wanted to happen, but I didn’t have a complete outline.  I wound up with a series of incomplete outlines.  It was like I would stop, shine a light ahead into the dark to see where I was going, write down what I saw from where I was, and then move forward.  When I ran out of notes, my writing would slow down, and I’d have to dig out the flashlight again and take more notes.

I’ve been writing casually for about 25 years, and more seriously for a year and a half, and I’m still trying to figure out what works best for me.  I’m starting to think that I need to use a different process for each story.  I once thought of writing in terms of sculpting, where the shape of the story becomes more and more refined with each draft and edit.  If a sculptor needs different tools for different mediums, maybe I need a different process for different story types.

It was pizza and beer tonight.  I had a lot more pizza than beer (4 slices, but only one bottle), but I’m still feeling tipsy.  What can I say?  I think it’s good that I’m a cheap date.

I have a number of random thoughts I want to roll with tonight.  There’s lots on my mind.  Some of it, I’m willing to share.  Some of it I’m not.  But let’s see what an inebriated Brian has to say…

State of the Union Address

I watched the President’s address, and there were only a few times where I frowned.  I’m neither democrat nor republican.  I identify more with Libertarians, though all of the Libertarian candidates I’ve ever seen have been a little crazy.  Be that as it may, I didn’t find too much at fault with President Obama’s speech.

There were a lot of standing ovations.  They seemed like political gestures, and they seemed cheap.  Watching the speech, watching both the President and the audience through the lens of political gesturing made the speech more interesting to me.

I’ll have to check the fact checkers tomorrow to see how much of what the President said was true, and how much was exaggeration.  He usually does pretty well at keeping to the truth, but he’s a politician like the rest.  He’s going to spin things.

Overall, though, I believe that he’s sincere in his attempts to help the country.  I just don’t agree with everything he has to say.

My Day Job

The President talked about solar energy, so we’ll use that as a segue to talk about my day job.  I’m a programmer, and since the year started, I’ve been working on software to help control equipment at a solar plant.  I won’t go into the details too much, but the site produces around 20MW, and the software I helped create is responsible for helping to control that site.  I’m very proud of what I do.

Proud as I might be, this month has been absolutely harrowing.  Tonight is the first night I’ve been home around 6PM.  I could have been home by 5PM, but I wanted to stay and watch the inverters at the site shut down with the sun.  I wanted to make sure the application did what it was supposed to do.  It did, and I was relieved.  Hopefully the customer will appreciate the application.

The main reason that this month has been so harrowing is that we’ve been understaffed.  The person that was primarily responsible for the web application went to India to get married.  She was to be gone for 6 weeks, and I thought she had the application mostly finished .  She didn’t.  What she had done wasn’t to the level of my standards, and I had to work a lot of late nights to get the project to a place where it could be deployed.

This put me in an ugly position, and I’m still uncomfortable with where things are.  I had to work very long hours to try and make something decent, and even still, had to make a lot of very uncomfortable compromises.  When my coworker returns, we’ll need to talk about the work that she’s been doing.  That also makes me uncomfortable.

There’s more I could say about that work, but I may have said too much.  I don’t want my coworker to get in any trouble.  I just want her to do a better job next time, and follow some better patterns and better coding practices.  I’m sure I can help her get there.

Chasing my Dreams

With all of the work I’ve been doing for money, I haven’t had much time to follow my dreams.  I’ve done my best.  I’ve been meeting up with Michael on Wednesdays to write.  But I really haven’t had time to write beyond that.  I’ve done a little bit of editing, and I’ve started a couple of interesting story threads, but that’s about it.

I’m forced to reevaluate how I’m spending my time and energy.  I’ve been programming my little heart out, but that’s not where I see myself in 5 or 10 years.  I’d rather be writing fiction than writing software.

It has me a little bit torn, because I have talent as a programmer.  I’m in a good position where I’m doing good work.  I’m proud of my accomplishments, and I’m with a company that loves me.  It’s a place I’ve been excelling.

All of these late nights feels like a distraction from my calling, though.  Or maybe it’s one of my callings monopolizing the time from another.

I need balance.  I need to keep chasing my dream, and keeping pulling the words from my head and imagination.  I have talent, drive, and a dedication to improve my craft.  I’m getting better.  I just need to give myself more time to write, and not squander that time when it is available.

Well, I’ve been busy.

I brought in the New Year with a virus and some inherited problems at work.  The amount of work was honestly insurmountable, and I’ve been working very long nights and most weekends in order to try and get it all done.  It still isn’t quite finished, but I’ve been making it a point to not stay as late on Wednesdays, so that I can write at least one evening of the week.

I haven’t done a lot of new writing, but I’ve been editing my “Unclaimed Goods” story.  I think it’s almost ready to send out.  I sent it to the people that worked on it with me during the Writer’s Workshop at Convolution, and the feedback I’ve received so far has been very positive.

After polishing the short story a little bit (goodness that sounds like a euphemism), I turned my attention to the fantasy story that I worked on most of last year.

It’s… uh… pretty bad.

It’s actually so bad that I probably won’t fix it.  I’ll just treat what I’ve done so far as an outline and start over.

As bad as that story is, seeing it for what it is was a good experience for me.  I can see how much I’ve grown as a writer, just in the last few months.  I don’t make the same sloppy mistakes anymore.  I write more quickly than I did last year, and the quality of the work that I produce now is much improved.  It’s good to know.

I may want to change my writing plan, actually.  My plan was to finish the first draft of that story while I let the Mel Walker story cool off.  I’m not sure I can keep going, tacking on new stuff to the end of the old.  If I’m already planning on starting over with it, this could be a circumstance where there’s no time like the present.

While thinking about it, I decided I should dust the cob webs off my blog, too.  It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything.  I’ve missed it.

I posted every day in October here, and I wrote tens of thousands of words.  In November, I hardly posted here at all, but I managed to get my writing goal accomplished.

I managed to maintain the writing inertia into December, and I finished the Mel Walker story.  That was a week and a half ago.

I’ve been trying not to feel bad for slowing down.  I’ve hardly posted anything here, and I haven’t done any new writing since I finished the Mel Walker story.  I’ve done some editing on Unclaimed Goods (formerly known as Baggage), but that editing was mostly using a highlighter and a pen to capture proposed changes.

Christmas did happen during this time, and I did take a trip to Southern California for work.  There was shopping, and work, and family, and work.  I’ve been busy, so I can cut myself a little slack.

Now we’re at the end of the year, and the start of a new one.  Let’s count some blessings:

• I have some success under my belt.  I know that I can finish a first draft of a novel.  This is huge.
• I have a couple of groups of people I meet with and share stories with.  These are really good people, that are talented.  They’ve given me feedback that I needed to hear, and they’ve tried to be gentle with me.  These are friends and peers, and I don’t have to feel alone in my solitary activity.
• I have a new technological device.  I received a Surface Pro 2 for Christmas, specifically so that I would have a device for writing as my old writing laptop has deteriorated.
• I have a family that is proud of me and supportive of my writing.  I couldn’t do this without their support.

I think the first thing I’m going to do in 2014 is give myself a writing schedule.  It’s kind of like a New Year’s resolution.  It’ll be good for me.  I’m good at following rules, and if I don’t do something like this, I run the risk of going silent again.

This week has been pretty rough.

It started with working late on Monday, to prepare for a trip to Southern California on Tuesday.  I flew down Tuesday morning, worked for several hours in a somewhat picturesque desert, then flew back that same night.  Wednesday was a normal work day, followed by writing with Michael and Cody (and Jenni!) at Starbucks.  I was so frazzled, though, that I forgot to grab the power cord for my laptop, and had to do everything with pen and paper.  Thursday was the holiday party at work, followed by the whole rest of the evening Christmas shopping with the kids.

Now it’s Friday.  As I’m writing this, there are a large number of teenagers in my living room, enjoying each other and having a Christmas Party.  My writing laptop is out there, hooked up to the stereo, playing Christmas music.  I’m hiding away in my garage, clicking and clacking on my mechanical keyboard, enjoying some distance between me and all that noise and energy.

I’m not an expert on the Myers Briggs personality types, but I know what this feeling is that I’m experiencing.  It’s the same thing I felt at the very end of Convolution.  I’m out of that stuff that lets me hang out with people in an enjoyable way.  I feel low.  I’m tired.  I’m on the edge of crankiness.

Fortunately, I’m also experienced with this little personality quirk, and I know how to deal with it.  First, I need to do what I’m doing now.  That is, I put a little distance between me and the rest of the world.  It’s not a huge gulf.  Melissa can still poke her head out and check on me, and I have walked in and been a little bit sociable throughout the evening.  But there is a shield I can duck behind, and try to get my thoughts in order, and breathe easy.

That’s one of the things that was so crazy about this week.  Normally, as a programmer, I can just put my headphones on, dive into my code, and the rest of the world goes away.  I have to expend energy on the programming, but I also recharge a little.  When I finish a particularly gnarly project, I get a huge boost.  Or if I’m feeling really low, I can drift into the monotonous, mindless side of programming, and spend my work day recharging.  It normally works out really well for me.

This week, however, I was constantly interrupted.  We have a huge project that we need to have finished as soon as possible, and for various reasons, we’ve hit snags and delays and roadblocks, and I’m one of the ones that’s best equipped to help us get to a finished place.  So all this week, I had a lot of phone calls, and a lot of people coming by my desk to ask me questions, or get my help.  I had no choice but to put down my headphones, put down everything I was working on, and focus on the person talking to me so that I could help them as best I could.

Even though I need to withdraw from people for a little bit, I can still get lonely.  Loneliness wasn’t my problem this week.  I only want to mention this because it’s a logical mistake to think that an introvert might not get lonely while they’re recharging.  I have, and I do get lonely sometimes.

Tomorrow, I’ll have a bit of time in the car on my way to the Oakland area for the Auspicious Northern California Writer’s Group.  It’s very auspicious, and I’ve been looking forward to it for about a month.  It includes me, Pol, Setsu, and Karen.  I’ve read all their work, and I’ve written down some notes.  I hope that I’m helpful, and I hope that the work I submitted isn’t judged too harshly.  I think I’ll talk about that fear in another post.

The interesting thing about the formation of this group is that, as Setsu put it, I’m the center.  Karen, Setsu, and I met at Convolution in the writer’s workshop, so the three of us are connected in that fashion.  Setsu and I have become really great friends since Convolution.  Karen and I have shared some correspondence since then, too, and it was Karen’s idea that we start a writer’s group when it became apparent that I couldn’t join her in any of the groups she was already attending.  I’ve been friends with Pol forever, and Pol and I have written together and enjoyed fiction together for years and years.  I’m the common thread in our group, and I feel some of the stress of being the hub in the middle of the wheel.

I’m not sure of the comfort level of all introverts in their ability to be the center, or if INFJ’s have some special, functional ability that helps.  I’ve been the central figure in other sorts of groups, online and offline.  The only way I’m able to function is to take an emotional step back, out of myself, and focus on the needs and goals of the group itself.  Then I’m able to make plans and act on those plans for the group, and not just for myself.

I haven’t had to do so much of that with the Auspicious group.  We’ve used Google Groups, and since Pol is hosting, he’s taken care of nearly all of the requirements for making the gathering happen.  All I have to do at this point is show up and be happy and energetic.

Which brings me back to this hellish week, and what I’m doing right this moment.  I’m recharging.  I’m going to go to bed as early as I can get away with tonight, and I’m going to get up early and be out of the house early, so that I can be by myself in the car a bit longer.  I’ll listen to James Marsters read me Jim Butcher’s Dead Beat.  If I get to the Oakland area too soon, I’ll find a quiet coffee shop and putter around with my short story.  I’ll be ready for tomorrow.  I just have to get through tonight.

With the holiday season upon us, it feels appropriate to talk for a moment about gift giving.  As it so happens, I learned something interesting about myself this week, when I set up my daughter’s new computer.

Bryanna’s birthday is at the end of August, and for her birthday, I offered to put together a new gaming computer for her.  The computer she had was old and slow, and was really past its end of life.  I’d done something similar for my son, Chris, and that had turned out to be a really fantastic project.  He wanted to build it himself, so I pretty much just offered guidance, supplied the budget, and stood by as a safety net while he put it together.

Bryanna didn’t want quite the same experience.  She learned this year that while she likes computers, she doesn’t see a technical job as being in her future.  That seems fine to me, so once we got that straight, it was just a matter of me getting the parts and putting them together.

I was really excited about doing this for her.  I enjoy putting computers together, anyway, but this was extra special, because I was putting it together for Bryanna.  I knew what a huge upgrade it was going to be for her.  I’d played some League of Legends with her on her old system, and we joked about it being a potato.  This was going to be fantastic experience.

The parts came in on Tuesday, and I put it all together.  Bryanna was free to be as involved as little or as much as she wanted to be.  She seemed upset.  I got it put together for her, set it up, and she seemed wounded.  There wasn’t anything I could do or say that would make her smile.

Bryanna and I have talked about this already, and it turns out she had just been having a bad day.  Her horrible reaction to the new computer apparently had nothing to do with the computer or me.  It was just bad timing.

The problem was that I felt so horrible afterwards.  I felt like my heart had been cut out.  I’d been looking forward to the excitement in her eyes so much, and instead I found sadness and disappointment.

The take-away from all of this is that I’m not quite as altruistic as I thought.  If I was altruistic, I wouldn’t need to get the positive feedback.  I needed it, though.  I needed to feel like I had done something good for my daughter.  When that need was not satisfied, I felt terrible.

I’m not sure how to work on that, or if that’s even a problem.  I want to believe that I can rise above selfishness and do things for the benefit of others, purely for the benefit of others.  In practice, however, I’m seeing that I’m really just satisfying my own need to feel needed.  I wanted to give my daughter love and affection, and see it reflected in her eyes, so that I would receive love and affection in return.