The Wall

There’s a story I began a long time ago. I really liked this story. It details the beginning of a now pretty much dead genre called Cyberpunk. I wanted to know where the whole thing came from? How did the world end up as messed up and dystopian as your typical world? And more importantly, I wanted to tell the tale of people, because at the bottom, middle and top of every story, it’s usually about people. It’s what we’re interested in. Of course, the where, how and when is important. It frames the conversation, but if there’s no real who, then the whole thing is an exercise in world building a world without a population. That’s… not as fun to read as you may think. When’s the last time you read of a dead world without someone to witness it, or someone who will be affected in some way?

So I made it about some people. These people, these characters? They didn’t care about the birth of Cyberpunk. They wanted to stay alive, they wanted to make it. The bad guy was just doing something so logical, it wasn’t even bad to him. It was necessary. Appropriate. It had to be right in his (gender neutral usage) context.

So I have three main characters, all heroes in their own right. They’re interesting, and fun, and they all have their own hangups. The thing is, I don’t seem to be able to move the story on. I've been looking at this thing for the last two weeks wondering how to progress from here. I've been getting around it by getting the other projects up-to-date, finishing my short stories that I put up, and generally not stopping the whole writing thing, whether it be editing or something else. but I’m not writing. I’m not creating. I’m not doing the thing on the big story, the one that should be holding me tight. So again, I’m reaching out and trying to figure out how to do it.

Eventually I’m going to end up writing what’ll probably end up as pure crap for a bit, just to get into the swing of things. I don’t want to do that. Or maybe I’ll have to accept that this is the cost of starting a story and then leaving it for so long. Maybe there just isn’t any good way of getting into it, and the only way to go back to the story is not think about cutting it up, moving it around, peeking around plot points or fixing the characters or understanding motivation, or whatever I think may help in the end, but to put my fingers on the keys, type out whatever awful phrases or concepts are rattling around in my mind and just get it down.

I can’t go back to the phase I was in when I lost myself in the words and knew exactly what the next chapter or sentence was going to be like.

I guess that’s why the whole process of drafting and then redrafting exists. But I’m mightily tired of going to the same place and not knowing how to move it forward. You can’t fix something that hasn’t been written yet.

Which kind of brings me to my current dilemma: instead of doing what I’m telling myself to do, why am I still writing about doing the writing instead of actually doing the writing? Beats me. But if I knew all the answers, this blog would never have been born. I think it’s time to give this particular wall the death of a thousand keyboard cuts.

Annus horribills

It’s been a year. I’d love to say it’s been a great year, or a fantastic one, or even mention that it’s been an eventful one... in the sort of tone which means unexpected and yet wonderful things have happened. For me, it’s just been a year.

It wasn’t a good year. This blog will be a year and a day old. Go figure. Time keeps happening, whether we want it to or not. I've been doing a lot of looking in at myself and how long its taken me to get here. I've done a lot of soul searching in that time and found the place a little emptier and arid than I’d have expected. Or maybe not.

I finally got into the habit of writing, and then got out of it, and mostly just floundered around for a long time. Nowadays I accept that I’m kind of there, but more so than a year ago.

I wrote about people who were emotional, and over the top, and who were raw and real. I’m a writer, I made that stuff up all the time. When I finally take a quick look back over the year, I need to remember that somewhere in those last three hundred-sixty something days, I learned something. I need to remember that it wasn’t all loss. That there were also good times. There are always good times.

There were wins. If someone does come across this blog and gets to reading, then I’d like to make one request of you.

Whatever it is - the thing that you want to do, but have never tried to do it seriously - give it a shot. Just try. And then try again. And keep on trying. You’ll get better at it, and you’ll have found your happy.

Happy can be its own reward. Go find you some happy. If it’s something creative, even better, but that’s not important. Go for a walk. Watch a plane fly across the sky; heck, make imaginary shapes up in the clouds if that’s what does it for you, but do something. Actively get out there and get you some happy. It might not be perfect, but enjoy it for the intent at least as much as the thing itself.

Get your happy on. Do life.

Too Long

I suck at Tumblr.

I also suck at quite a few other things, but I've recently started using Tumblr to post up the book in chapters, and I just don’t get how to interact with the world of Tumblr. I also joined a writing community and am posting there for feedback about story, character, plot - actually I think I ticked every available box for someone to take a look at my story to let me know where the holes are. Unsurprisingly I haven’t had a huge amount of feedback. It’s probably like the exact amount of feedback I’ll be getting from agents (have I mentioned I’m putting together a database/list/spreadsheet of agents that I’m querying to?) and publishers and from people at large if I do end up putting the book on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or wherever fine ebooks are sold.

In short, although I haven’t updated this recently, I've been not lazy. I’m still trying. I’m still not writing every day, but I am trying to do something most days. The reason I mention is is because I’m feeling a little bit defensive. I wanted to put a new post up every month, just to show myself, if no one else that I can actually do stuff, and that I have been doing stuff.

I’m not the only person in the world who says “I can write a book.” I’m just one of the people who decided to get up and start. And then grind through it. And then keep going. And that’s all it takes really. I didn’t need to be amazing, or gifted, or have the most fantastic, unique and spell-binding story to tell (but of course I hope so. Everybody should hope their story is the dog’s whiskers in their heart of hearts), I just needed to be the one to do it. And keep going.

Its now almost a year since I started to get really serious and explore new avenues to prove it could be done. To prove to myself and anyone else that it isn’t impossible. In that time, I’ve learned so much, found a person at work who is an insanely competent line editor and been endlessly surprised by a close friend of mine who’s been with me every step of the way from down to up and all the way around.

I took a look at some of the short stories that I've either written or mostly written (story of my life, but you get the idea), and I've polished them a bit. I've put two up online in a kind of serialised format to see what other people think, and you know the most important thing I've learned from all of it?

Mostly, it’s that people don’t care. That’s a liberating realisation. It means that I can learn, and make mistakes, and keep trying. It means that I can keep getting better, and failing, all the way up until I don’t fail. I can connect to people and they’ll actually be interested in what I’m doing because they’re a self-selecting audience. I may not be earning money from this, but I will be learning a whole heap of stuff which will stand me in good stead. I’m doing the equivalent of paying my dues. I’m putting out a tester for people to see. I’m practising. And nobody cares. People tend to not focus on failures, but they sure as heck like to see successes. I don’t need to advertise my name - but I do need to start advertising my content. So I’m working on creating more.

The second part to this is understanding how to present myself and my work. It’s about finding that balance between being alone long enough to knock a few words out and finding, establishing or joining in a community that does care. That’s what Tumblr is for so many people. In an effort to describe it to people, I've called it Facebook for pictures, but it isn’t. It’s so much more than that. There is a large part of the site which revolves around pictures though, and about sharing, but whilst this is an inspirational and uplifting thing at times, the flip side of it is that when you’re someone like me who has the visually artistic ability and acumen of a dying amoeba in one of the lower parts of the Atlantic Ocean, it becomes a bit of a challenge. I can’t talk in pictures or gifs if the sale of a story depended on it.

Added to the fact that the UI is simple and easy to use, and we have a problem. Granted the UI is simple and easy to use, but I cannot wrap my head around it. Every time I think I've got it nailed, I learn something else. I think I understand queueing, haven’t quite worked out drafting (come on, how hard can that be? What’s wrong with me?) or scheduling… Am I over-complicating things? Why can’t I repost a picture from someone else’s site when I did the exact thing not five minutes ago? Have I completely lost the ability to learn new tech?

Right now, at the point I’m writing this, I suck at Tumblr. I’ll have to get better because I can see in it a community that cares, and somewhere where I’ll get honest feedback. It may not be pleasant to hear, but I get the feeling that it’ll be constructive for the most part. It has been purely positive so far, and that’s phenomenal. At the point in writing this, I've been terrible at keeping this blog updated. Right now, I think I should have been much further along in getting my last story out of the door, and I most definitely should have been working a whole heap more on my second story.