Why I Blog Less So I Can Write More

September 14, 2009 at 2:11 am (Blogging)
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I have noticed that my blog postings are getting fewer and farther between – even the ‘easy’ ones where I repost already written fiction from my collaborative writing community. It’s pretty hard to maintain a good blog. Anyone that says “you need a blog” is making a suggestion that has merit, but also entails a whole butt load of work. There is the essential component of having a good idea that hasn’t been covered to death, then finding something to say abut that idea that hasn’t been said five billion other times in the exact same way, and then the craft of writing the piece. Once you’ve done that you have to do it all over again, maybe not immediately, but certainly within a timely fashion; say, once every couple of days.

For some people that process can take days right there. And if you’re an expert on something, or even just trying to be informative and give people value for their click, there is all the research that many topics entail. Oh – and you have to do all the links, the attributions, the editing, the keywords, and maybe even a nice little summary. Of course you’re trying to stand out too so you’ll grab hold of some images to pepper your writing with and catch the wandering eye and short attention span of your target audience. You need to promote your blog, post the link on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and perhaps Digg It, or Technorati it, and at the end of the day, after you’ve checked all your stats to see your traffic a whole fifteen people might have checked you out.

And if you’re like me and you’re hoping that your blog will alert people to the fun of your true love and get them curious and you find that you’re not driving any traffic there, you gotta start wondering: is it worth all this damn trouble? You have to start asking yourself “why do I blog?”. If the answer is “to advertise” than maybe it’s just not all that useful after all. The standard advice for writers and other professionals is that you have to self-promote, self-promote, self-promote, but is that incredible cacophony of sound that is the world-wide-web really doing anyone any good?

On Twitter, which I actually enjoy for more than it’s potential to advertise my wares, the majority of people that follow me are bots looking to advertise products. All the ‘in the know’ blogs by the ’smart people’ tell you not to be a bot, but give value, but even those value-laden pundits can become overwhelming and tedious. Link after link is advertised sending you off to sites that tell you how to market, how to create great ads in Photoshop, how to sell, how to write, how to yell louder than anyone else, and it’s all just becoming noise, noise, noise. And we all know what happens next: we drown it out. We tune it out, we drop out, we find a secluded beach somewhere.

The only things that really give value in this life are the things you’re passionate about. I’m passionate about Pan Historia. I’m passionate about gardening, writing, reading good books, good games, good food, art, the people I love, and so if I don’t have the passion to tell you something interesting on this blog – I’m not going to waste my time and yours by making sure I post every few days to keep my blog on the top of the list.

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I’m Nearly Famous

August 11, 2009 at 10:20 am (Blogging, Pan Historia - Community Site)
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I’m very pleased to be able to post that I was interviewed for another blog. Read about Pan Historia in the The National Networker blog. The folks that run that site are really friendly and I’m chuffed as all get out that they choose Pan Historia as a topic.

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#WriteChat on Twitter

June 1, 2009 at 5:53 am (Blogging)
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Right now I’m participating in #writechat – which is a rather cool Twitter phenomena. Every Sunday writers form a free-wheeling chat group in the Twitter stream that weaves in and out of other conversations. Topics are about writing: inspiration, mood, tips, techniques, publishing, etc. For those new or unfamiliar with Twitter, the chat/microblogging platform, hashtags are used to separate out topics and make them easily searchable. If you have software like the Tweetdeck on your computer you can actually create a ‘group’ for any topic you want to follow and it separates them out for you, regardless of whether you follow that person or not.

One of the recurring topics on #writechat is often how such conversations help inspire writing or writers. I don’t really find that to be true. Actually I tend to think of such activities as a bit of procrastination from the act of writing itself. After all if you’re reading a bunch of ‘tweets’ about writing and then jumping in yourself you can hardly be busy at work.

That said I still think it’s a very valuable tool. One of the reasons I’m a big fan of collaborative writing is that I’m a social animal. Traditionally writing has tended to be a lonely business with its fair share of misanthropes in its austere and often dusty ranks. Activities like #writechat connect up different writers to each other and shake out the cobwebs. So even though it doesn’t always lead me to more or better writing, I would be the last one to deny the benefits of just hanging out and getting to know other writers.

And for those that argue that they can see no point in Twitter it’s definitely one of the better uses of the application. It is an excellent Petri dish for meeting and breeding new writers and just one of the examples of how Twitter can be used in a good way to increase connections between people, rather than magnify the modern malaise of alienation, as many detractors of social media claim.

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Jack of All Trades

May 19, 2009 at 6:31 pm (Blogging)
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“Jack of all trades, master of none.”

There is something compelling about being considered good at everything, and yet… I long to be a ‘master’ of my trade. The problem, for me, is my own nature. Neither side of my brain seems entirely dominant, and the entire world is full of wonderful things I want to do. Having started a new job my head is now full of botanical genus and species and tables of environmental requirements and micro climates.

I’m in the middle of a re-structure of my volunteer staff system at the community interactive fiction and role-play site I own and run. The ins and outs of refocusing people to create an even livelier and more community orientated site is a highly creative and rewarding task for me. Dealing with all the different personality types is challenging but in a really good way.

I still have a ton of little programming tasks to complete.

So when I sat down about fifteen minutes ago planning to write a little fiction for one of my collaborative novels I found myself unwilling. Over and over again I have pushed the agenda that to be a writer you need to write. Fortunately for me I have other outlets for my writing. Fiction is the left brain of my writing persona. Writing my blog or composing clearly written legible staff agreements that communicate my intent successfully is the right side of my writing self.

Writing is the one thing that I do that ties all the other areas together. Since my community site is online my only method of communication is through the written word. It has forced me to hone my skills. That, in turn, has synergistically impelled my fiction writing to new heights. Talking about any of my activities via my blog whether it be gardening, writing, or painting allows me to continue to sharpen my quill day by day.

The act of writing in all its forms has become essential to the core of me. I may be jack of all other trades, but in the end I aspire to be master of one. Wait … what does that remind me of?

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

Bwahaha!

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Taking Notes … or not.

March 31, 2009 at 7:21 pm (Blogging)
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wyatt_if_only In my friend Jerry’s blog he talks about taking a notebook with him to write down inspiration. Humorously he mentions taking a pen next time. It made me think about some of my own efforts to record inspiration so I don’t lose it. It has, for me, often been a losing battle, and yet I still find much of my inspirations coming out in my writing as if by magic. I’m pretty sure that much is lost however.

I tend to lose notebooks and pens. I have, on numerous occasions, pledged to carry one with me. I have nearly a whole box full of journals, dream journals, and notebooks where only the first few pages have been written on. All of these were started with the intention of keeping notes for inspiration and practicing my writing. They all ended up in the slush pile of Wyatt’s lost and lonely things. My next plan was equally short-lived: I bought one of those little tape recorders so I could speak into it. Two problems came out of that one: I lost it, and I never transcribed the notes I did take.

I have been told over and over again to keep lists and take notes. I lose my lists or forget to take them with me. I have had some better success with notes for projects I’m working on, but eventually those notes, too, get lost and every time I start a new project it’s like starting from scratch. The only thing that saves me is the computer and not a laptop either. I’m talking about my big old honking pc. I can’t lose it because I can’t move it. Which reminds me I did see a guy bring his pc, monitor, and the whole kit and kaboodle to an internet café a few weeks back. That’s determination for you. Anyway back to me. When it comes to my computer I always know where it is. I can keep track of the notes I keep for myself in their little folders (search if I lose them), and suddenly a whole new world of organization was opened to me.

But what happens when I’m driving in my car or walking through the woods and an idea strikes me? Generally, if it’s any good, I try thinking about it a lot, repeating the words in my mind, and then I hope like hell it’s still floating around in my skull when I get back from my trip so I can jump on the computer and write it. More often than not I forget before I get home, or I have something else to do before I log onto the computer. Actually even the act of firing my programs can lose it for me as I start to read email, read tweets, or begin a discussion with someone online at my community site Pan Historia.

So what do you do to keep track of your inspirations and ideas? What works for you and what have you tried that didn’t work?

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A Fire in the Belly

March 27, 2009 at 5:15 pm (Blogging)
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I have often been accused of being ‘too hard on myself’. I’m the first to admit that I like to set the bar high. I even set it so higher than it is possible to achieve – when it comes to art and fiction. In writing this blog my advice has often verged on aggressiveness in regard to my stance on what writers should do. In other words I tell them to write. No matter what just write. A few people have taken me to task for this. It’s true – not everyone has room in their life to take as much time out for writing as I do now, or enough time to get into the studio and paint, or sculpt, or whatever is they do, but that is because they have set other things as higher priorities.

When I was a single parent of a kid under the age of his majority I had to set a couple things as higher priorities than my writing or art. I had to make sure he had a roof over his head, food on the table, a good school nearby, and a pair of the right shoes to fit in with his peers. This often meant some sacrifices. Back when he was quite small I decided to become a painter. At times I was able to indulge myself, but when times got harder I had to cut back to the point that I didn’t have a studio to paint in. For me to do oil paintings meant that if I didn’t have a studio I didn’t tend to paint. I find landlords tend to keep your security deposit when you have ruined the walls and floor with paint and solvents (I’m a messy kind of painter). Oil paints and canvases are expensive. Their acquisition interfered with buying food and paying rent. Working freelance for a time meant that I found myself with less time as well. This was okay – because my priority had to be the young life I was responsible for. That didn’t take away my urge to create though. I found a way to do both.

I found myself on the computer a lot. This is when I began to write more earnestly. When I first started it was definitely only an outlet for my frustrated artist-self. Gradually, however, I found it was something that I could manage as a single parent and sole support of my difficult offspring. Collaborative writing, in particular, was suited because I could write in small chunks when time afforded, which was between work deadlines or when unmanageable demon-spawn offspring was finally restive (passed out or zoned in to his then obsession with Wrestlemania).

As I began to learn the craft of writing, I was beating myself up a lot over not painting. How could I call myself an artist if I didn’t do the one thing that qualified me as an artist, i.e. make art? I still wrestle with this problem since I have found that my inspiration for painting is either on or it is off. I don’t dabble. As a writer I have shown far more consistency. It fits in with my life style better. I can find room for it in my day. I can get up an hour earlier or stay up an hour later. It’s true I haven’t written the novel that I planned so many years ago, but I have maintained a pretty decent writing schedule for years now. Now the child is grown and I can change my priorities back to the creative life so it’s even easier than before to justify the time, but that doesn’t mean other things don’t get in the way. I just have to remember to move them back out of my way again.

Setting the bar high is my way of keeping a fire in my belly and a goad at my back. I don’t beat myself up for not achieving my goals; I beat myself up for not trying to achieve my goals. So again I say to you: you want to be a writer? Find the time to write. Even if you have to take a notepad to the crapper and lock the door, write. It’s just that simple.

But don’t forget to live – yesterday I spent the day at the beach combing for interesting stones – because you have to write about what you know.

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Warming Up

March 24, 2009 at 5:33 pm (Blogging, Creative Writing)
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The lure of good soil...

The lure of good soil...

If you follow my blog regularly you know that I recently moved. Life has radically altered, and yet… it must, by the nature of what I do, remain the same. I still need to get up in the morning, log onto my computer and begin my day. Besides any paycheck job I might eventually get I brought my work with me when I moved. I still need to work on my community site Pan Historia, I still need to work for any clients I get online, and I still need to be a writer. The challenge is fitting in the old into the new without losing why I came west in the first place.

There have been a lot of disruptions to my writing and Pan schedule. It’s been harder for me to find the time to do my fiction writing, or to write for my blog. New family obligations have popped up – and then there is the draw of the outside. Back east so much of the year was spent in cold, sleet, snow, ice, and wind that I had little temptation to unseat myself from my writing and take up other activities. Even in the summer I was rarely moved because I dislike humidity and New England summers are often very humid. I can’t even image what it’s like down south so don’t start with me.

The upshot is that it is very easy to get up from my computer and to take myself outside (which I wanted in my life, a big part of why I moved in the first place), and very hard to get back into my routine which I need to keep as well. It’s my writing that has suffered the most. While I have not completely succumbed to writing inertia I have only completed three posts for my collaborative fiction stories at Pan since moving into my new place, thus my stories are languishing. It’s not easy for my fellow writers to work around me. My blog has also suffered. Not being in the full flow of writing and thinking about writing means that I have fewer ideas for my blog. I hate to just write for the hell of it. Yet, here I am.

The purpose of this blog post (for me) functions just the same as warming up before an athletic event. Even though the sun is shining on my garden right now, even though the guest bed needs folding up and putting away, even though there are still boxes to unpack and sort and decide what goes back into storage, I am going to write. Even if I have to work later into the night to meet my deadline for my client, Bardic Web, I am going to write.

The lesson in all this for any writer is that no matter what you need to make time in your life to write. It doesn’t matter if you love the outdoors, or if you are on a job search, or if you are a single parent (I know of what I speak) you have to make that time and keep to it. It may not be as much time as ideal, but make it regular and make it priority.

There. Now I have warmed up my fingers a little bit. It’s time to go slip into the skin of a man who has endured natural disaster and a nuclear holocaust and is now living under a bitter sky.

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Do You Want to Be a Great Writer?

January 31, 2009 at 3:52 pm (Blogging)
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I have sufficient hubris, as an author with no published tomes, to present writing tips here on my blog. My credentials are extensive but rather eclectic and unconventional. Like many that presume to teach I’m often better at theory than the execution thereof, but at heart I feel that I have had the best teachers that literature has to offer.

While it is essential to work at good writing, to learn the craft, to hone your skills, there are times when you just have to ignore all those writing tips out there in self-help books and blogs like my own. My tips are reflective of my taste in literature and what I consider to be good writing. Other people are writing from their own view, whether it is ‘accepted wisdom’ or personal taste. Sometimes people lose objectivity and can’t tell the difference between the two. Some people even forget the soaring flights of breathtaking prose that attracted them to writing in the first place.

If you want to write just like everybody else then follow all the tips. Trim the fat. Grab up your thesaurus. Make sure you get rid of all those weak and floppy adverbs and all those ellipses before someone sees them and marks you as inferior. Tips are useful. Do read and consider them, but when it comes learning how to be a writer there is really only resource that I can recommend with certainty and that is from the writers you adore. Read what you like, read more of it, branch out and read some classics, and then read them all over again; this time analyzing the language and how it is used. Some writers will seem to adhere to all those writing tips you have read, but many more of them (greats) will be breaking rules all over the place.

Of course it takes experience to know when to break the rules so the other best writing tip I can offer you is: write.

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Getting Ready to Fire Up the Press

December 26, 2008 at 2:25 pm (Blogging)
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Time to take a long and welcome stretch and then consider what the New Year will bring.

This year, for me, I anticipate many changes, but what goals might I set for myself in terms of writing?

As a collaborative writer I’m approaching something rather exciting at Pan Historia.  One of my collaborative ‘novels’ is coming to an end.  We are in the process of planning a conclusion and tying up all the loose ends.  Ideally it can then be read just like any other novel with a beginning, middle, and end.  I would like to also propose to my fellow writers at The Midnight People that we edit and then publish the work.  One of the really exciting developments of the computer and internet age is the greater freedom that writers have to get published.  Of course the Vanity Press has existed as long as the printing press, but nowadays self-publishing with all the trimmings of self-promotion and marketing is now a real possibility.  I anticipate a fairly small audience for our fantasy novel, but I think it would be a great thing to hold the real life paperback version of our collaborative work in our hands.  The sense of accomplishment alone would be worth it, even if we don’t entirely recoup the costs of the project.

In addition to a print version of the completed The Midnight People I hope to extend the publishing option to all of Pan Historia.  A number of years ago we put together a compilation book that we named the Pan Historia Birthday Book.  I had planned for a new one every year but sadly that was more work than I could manage, but I think it’s time for another. It sounds to me, reading what I have just wrote, that I really plan to enter the world of publishing, albeit in my small and quirky way.  Pan Press here I come!

Which leads me to my own solo literary effort: it’s time to get serious about my novel.  My New Year’s resolution will involve dusting off my research, and then writing at least a page a day.  If I can write a page of blog every day… well you get the picture.  I won’t wait a week to start, I’ll start today.  There is nothing like grabbing the moment and not letting good intentions get away.  I finally realized, in a blinding moment of revelation, what the block was to the novel and that was that I had character, no problem, but I hadn’t really decided what the damn plot was.  So I will work on a rough outline and try and hammer out the story arc.

Wish me luck.

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Writing Unique People

December 16, 2008 at 3:44 pm (Blogging)
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What makes one character unique from another? It has to be more than job, looks, or slang in their speech. In order to really create a truly unique individual with a distinctive ‘flavor’ all their own you have to get down deep into the emotional heart of them. Too often I see writers make the error of just relying on an external description of their character to carry off personality but really what we look like physically is not predicated by character except in the minor detail. It’s more likely to be found in the crow’s feet, the way we style (or don’t) style our hair, and how we wear our clothes.

I could probably write a whole thesis on the way people dress. There is tendency for those members of society who care about their appearance to suggest that people that are unkempt, dirty, or slobby don’t care what people think of them. This couldn’t be farther from the truth in most cases. The unkempt is just as much a ‘fashion’ statement as the well-groomed. Very often the individual is screaming out a political message or maybe just an antisocial “fuck you” at the world. Remember being a teenager and all you could think about was getting laid? There is no such thing as a complete lack of self-awareness in the average human being. Baggy unattractive clothes are often attempts to hide self-perceived flaws from the world: chubby, unfashionable proportions or breasts even.

Many writers will turn to describing ‘flashing sparkling green eyes’ or other such physical attributes common to romantic thinking, but more important than eye color is where the gaze falls. Do they meet your eyes when they look at you or do they glance away in shyness or discomfort? When we look at the human face there really is no such thing as twinkling eyes or a ‘cold’ look, yet the entire expression can seem to imply such, but there are a lot more choices out there too: weary, tired, haggard, bags under the eyes, dull eyes, dust on the eyelashes.

I am not suggesting, however, and this is important, that we clutter up our narrative with tons of description. Over describing your character leaves the reader with little to do and still doesn’t reveal their true distinctiveness. Description should be used like seasoning – in moderation unless you’re making curry. Throw in a comment about the stray few strands of hair in front of the eyes that annoy the observer and don’t seem to bother the owner and you’re giving us a little taste of that person’s character and mood. Mannerisms or nervous ticks can be useful but, again, should not be overused and not everyone has one. We do all have a way of moving that is distinctive. Is your character jerky like a puppet on strings or do they move with the ease of a trained dancer?

I don’t necessarily recommend the character sheet or the detailed character biography before you start writing, but if it works for you, by all means, use it as a tool. In my case I just try to imagine my character visually and then as I see the ‘play’ unfold I ’see’ what they are doing and I try and capture the little quirks and visual clues. I like my character to surprise me with what they might do next so I don’t care to pin them down with a character biography that is more than just a quick sketch. I can fill in the details as they come to life and they tell me who they are.

How a character performs tasks is much more telling then what they look like. Are they quick and sloppy, or quick and brilliant, slow but methodical, clumsy but inspired? Don’t tell us, show us. Does Bobby Schwartz type with two fingers or did he somewhere learn to type? Does he punch the keys emphatically or do his fingers brush softly over the keys? Does he often use the backspace keys to correct his errors? Is he looking at the keyboard or does he stare fixed at the monitor? In the case of Bobby Schwartz, one of my characters, I know he spills a lot of stuff on his keyboard because he eats while programming, and that means he has a box of old sticky keyboards (he doesn’t throw anything away) and a few new ones in boxes, or recycled ones stacked on his cluttered shelves so that he doesn’t lose time working if the keys start to stick.

In the case of Bobby he is partially inspired by me, partially by programmers I have known, but also he’s a mix of other people I have known. I also tend to eat and drink when I’m working at the computer but I have learned not to spill too much on the keyboard, I have a little brush for cleaning the dust bunnies out of it, and I never have a back up keyboard so disaster means I’ll have to lose a couple of hours in all probability to go get another keyboard from the local Staples.

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