Learning Things the Hard Way (or “My Entire Life”)

It’s been an insane amount of time since my last post, but more important than addressing that is addressing that it’s been an insane amount of time since I published a book. And I have reasons for that – legitimate reasons, and reasons that I don’t have the time or inclination to talk about here. So get to the point old man – what are you here to talk about?

I’m here to talk about, first and foremost, the importance of listening to people who are way more experienced than you. Not smarter, not more successful, but more experienced.

Because of my long, shall we say, “hiatus” away from my writing projects, I felt it necessary to revisit my older writing projects to get me excited for writing again. Not to mention, being an old man, I tend to forget things and needed a little refresher on my own stories. When I revisited Blood of the Mother, I was reminded of how much I love the story and the world I created. But I was also reminded of the flaws in the story and how many gaps were in the world I created. And while one could find problems in any creative endeavor after letting it lie untouched for a while and revisiting it, I had to seriously consider the problems of this one. You see, Blood of the Mother was always meant to be part of a series (hence “The Godblood Chronicles” obviously), and I had future events planned out for the next several books… sort of.

It’s that “sort of” that became my downfall. I’ve never been what you would call a planner. I’ve never been that organized. Oh sure, I’ve gotten better in my old age – with much thanks to my wife and her dogged persistence – but I’m a far cry from someone who typically has all his ducks in a row. Instead, I’m happily watching my ducks run amuck and enjoying themselves while trying to keep track of them all at once. This, unfortunately, does not work in the writing world.  At least, not for me.

So, in an effort to smooth out some of the wrinkles in the fabric of The Godblood Chronicles, I set about doing some more intensive and detailed world building. After about a week of this, I began to realize that as I was filling in a lot of things that had previously been nebulous at best, there were parts of the Blood of the Mother that were shifting like tectonic plates, dropping whole chunks of story into the waters of uncertainty. I was being left with questions like “Do I really need this aspect of the story?” and “How can I get this piece of the story to work now that the backstory has changed to something else?” Things were going to have to be *gasp* rewritten in order for the story to work, as well as for the next books to follow.

In addition to the world building, I also took a stab at something that I’ve never really relished doing – outlining my stories. I’ve rebelled so much against this over the many years that I’ve written, and most of the time it comes back to bite me in the ass. I’ve even refused it after rereading my “bible” on writing over and over and over, that being Sometimes the Magic Works by Terry Brooks. And this is where my starting premise – pay attention to those with more experience – stems from. If I had just listed to Terry after one of my many readings of his advice, I wouldn’t be in this predicament.  If I said, “You know, Terry is a successful author and a fairly good writer… perhaps I should buckle down, step out of my comfort zone, stop being a prickly and rebellious young turd, and give it a try.”

But I guess existentially looking at it, if I had, I wouldn’t have had this experience to learn from in the first place. So which is better – to follow and succeed or to learn and eventually succeed? Maybe neither is better, but knowing how stubborn I am I will most likely continue to learn from my own experiences and – hopefully – eventually succeed. And I can share my experiences with others who may choose to follow or rebel, thus continuing the cycle.

(Author’s note:  As of the posting of the entry, all ebook and print copies of the Blood of the Mother are unavailable. I am shooting for the rewrite to be done in late 2020 or early 2021.  If you purchased either or both in the past, I will offer compensation at the time of publishing the new version.)

Stop in the Name of Comedy

I don’t talk much about comedy writing, which is funny (no pun intended) because much of my work has actually been comedy writing. I’ve been doing my comic for over ten years at this point, and I spent a good number of years writing scripts for a television sitcom (which never got picked up). In addition to that, much of my childhood and teen years was spent reading humorous offerings – Douglas Adams novels, Calvin and Hobbes collections, Dave Barry columns, etc.

I think it’s safe to say that over the numerous years I’ve picked up some tips here and there. And when I see something that could use a little work to make it funnier, it just gnaws at me. So I thought this would be a good forum for that.

I follow a blog called Texts From Superheroes. It’s fictitious text conversations between comic book characters, and it’s a lot of fun. There are a handful that have had me actually laughing out loud at my computer screen. The following example came close, but for one small misstep. Let’s see if you can find it…

Now, before I start, let me give you the disclaimer that humor is certainly in the eye of the beholder. I’m in no way an expert on it, but there are certain things that just feel right to me. And this offering from Texts From Superheroes was off. Why? Because they went one step too far with the punchline.

Read the conversation again, but stop at Hawkeye’s last message and ignore Deadpool’s last one. Doesn’t that feel like a much stronger ending? I get that Deadpool finds himself in wacky situations – it’s what makes him an entertaining character. But to have him actually explain the ludicrous situation takes a little bit of the humor out of the exchange. By leaving it at “WHO DID YOU PISS OFF!?”, it leaves the reader wondering and perhaps concocting in their own mind who the offended party is. The last bit from Deadpool is basically like explaining the punchline to a joke (and, to be brutally honest, “Ninja Whalers” didn’t exactly tickle my funny bone).

Really, all it boils down to is an age-old axiom: Less is more. Don’t assume your readers are dumb and explain everything. Sure, some of them might be, but don’t let your writing suffer for fear of losing the attention of that percentage of people.

What? Oh, no, I wasn’t talking about you. You’re not only smart, but you’re attractive and you smell nice.

Perchance to Dream…

I don’t normally subscribe to using dreams as a basis for book ideas.  I mean, that’s what Stephenie Meyer did with Twilight, and look how that turned out.  I mean, she’s a millionaire and all, but… actually, maybe that was a bad comparison.  Let me start again.

I don’t normally subscribe to using dreams as a basis for book ideas.  Most of my dreams are nonsensical at best, with the occasional cinematic narrative type dream that seems to make sense for about ten minutes after I wake up, and then I realize how silly it actually was.  But once in a great while I have a dream that can plant the seeds of interesting ideas.

I have a journal I sometimes use (meaning that I should be using it much more) to write down ideas for my works-in-progress.  There are two entries in there with dreams I had that I thought might be interesting to use.  The last one I wrote down was in 2008.  And that one wasn’t really that great.  The one before it was pretty cool, though.  I’d tell you, but I don’t want you to steal it.  It’s copyrighted by my brain.

The one I had last night was so vivid and narratively interesting that I had to capture it on paper.  And my brain continued to come up with ideas and explanations for things that happened.  Chances are, it’ll be more than a year or two before I even get around to actively thinking about using it, but it’s there.

I guess what I’m trying to say is don’t ever waste an idea.  Whether it’s a dream, a question, a newspaper article, a joke, or whatever, write it down and save it.  Maybe you’ll use it, maybe you won’t.  Maybe you’ll look at it in a year and think, “That’s garbage.”  And then you’ll look at it again in another year and realize that it’s brilliant.

Somewhere in the pile of boxes in my living room is a file folder labeled “Inspiration”, where I saved many a clipping or note that would aid me in my future writing.  I haven’t opened it in years, but it might be time to sift through it.

Maybe it’ll stir up more dreams to write down, continuing the cycle for years to come.

I’m No Superman

I didn’t really get to watch the show Scrubs when it aired on television. It began while I was in college, and my schedules were always so all over the place that I couldn’t really watch shows with any kind regularity. Plus, I had access to Cartoon Network and I’m a big cartoon nerd. In any case, following college I moved out to California, and we never paid for cable or bothered to purchase rabbit ears (when you could still do that). It was the beginning of our TV being used solely for DVDs and video games (and now Netflix).

But I digress. Scrubs. I had always heard that it was funny, but I didn’t have a chance to dive into it until several years ago when I started watching it on Netflix. And I really enjoyed it, so much so that I just finished my third run-through of it.  It has that wonderful mix of zany and heart-tugging that I like.

It has its problems, of course, like many shows do. But there was one that I definitely picked up on this time around, one that had bothered me subtly before this and made itself known in my third run-through. In at least three episodes there is a moment where a female character is called out for an odd or unexpected reaction, and her response is more or less this: “I’m a woman.” (There is one episode where this bothered me so much that I refused to watch it this time around.) And these are the blatant moments; I’m sure there may have been other similar but subtler ones and I just didn’t notice (I tend to watch sitcoms while I’m doing dishes or other work).

Now, I get that there are differences between men and women, and whether those differences are genetic or developed based on the way society presses women to act, I’m not smart enough to say. I just know that they are there.  Regardless, to boil down a character’s reaction as “I’m a woman” is rather insulting to women. Not only that, but it’s also lazy writing.

Don’t make your characters do something because they’re a guy or a girl. Put some reasoning behind the action. Give the character some dimension. Have it make sense to the viewer (or reader). But don’t cop out with a simple “I’m a woman”.

But then again, I could be wrong. I am, after all, a man.

A Return and a Resolution

Pardon me as I clear the dust away… it’s been a long time since I’ve been here and it just accumulates like the dickens.

For those of you who didn’t give up on me, thank you for being patient. It’s been a chaotic, crazy, insane five months or so. The quick recap is that we closed on a house, had to prep said house for moving into, had to move into it, and had to set it up for living in, and much of this was done by myself because my wife was very pregnant. Then she delivered the baby in August, so we’ve had that to keep us busy.

The bottom line is that I haven’t really been able to write. At all. And it sucks, because I really want to. And I know that I’m always the big advocate of “you can find time to write if you really try”, but even if I could find the time – which has been nigh-impossible – I just haven’t been in the headspace to be able to do it with all the major changes in my life.

But one of the big changes, that being my son going into kindergarten for a full day, will hopefully lead me back into the swing of things. I will be finding myself with a good amount of time by myself during the day, a chunk of which I will be devoting to my writing. So we’ll see how that all works out.

In the meantime, I will be trying to write here in my blog. I’d like to start using it to talk about things that I’m thinking about, serious and funny, as well as the craft of writing. That way I’m at least writing something once in a while.

Wish me luck.

The Good, The Bad, and the Creative

As a writer and an artist, I sometimes feel that I’m failure in that I’m not completely depressed and/or write depressing things. It’s a stupid thing to think about, but when many great artists and writers line up with that, it’s hard to believe that someone as generally happy and content as I am could ever be a good artist or writer, or even a great one.

At a writers Q&A panel that I participated in recently, I was surprised to hear devastating stories from the other three authors that I was with, and how those events shaped their creative lives. I sat off to the side thinking that I had never had to deal with anything like that, and I questioned if I was even a legitimate creative because of it. Should I have been damaged in some way in order to draw inspiration from and to give inspiration to others?

The answer is a resounding no. It’s always a momentary thing when I start walking that line of thought, but I always come back to the fact that it’s not a requirement to have to deal with an extreme tragedy in order to be creative. It’s a requirement to deal with life, the good and bad, to be able to draw on both when the creative product needs it.

It’s a similar debate that I have with myself when I’m writing and I feel that I’m not using enough conflict in the story. But I absolutely hate when I’m reading or watching something wherein terrible things frequently happen to a character or characters. Yes, I get that sometimes it’s a cliffhanger, and yes, I get that it’s supposed to keep readers/viewers engaged. But I do like to see good things happen to people more than just once amidst a sea of awful events. Experiencing too much negativity through a story as a reader or viewer just exhausts me emotionally, and it ends up costing me enjoyment of the creative product.

But this is all personal opinion. I know there are people out there that like to read the dark, depressing things, and there are people out there that want to read the fluffy, happy things. I like a good mixture. And that’s why there NEEDS to be creatives who have all experienced different things, good and bad, joyful and ugly. That way there’s a book or a TV show for each person who needs it.

What to Do…?

Another almost two months until this post appears. But I actually do sort of have an excuse now. We finally closed on our house, and I’ve been going crazy trying to prep it for moving into. I’m pretty much tackling it alone, since Katie has been knee-deep in work. So amidst the house prepping I’ve still been taking care of my son, keeping up with my webcomic, and trying to write when I have time. But the blog posts take a back seat.

In addition, I’m still not sure what I want to do with this blog. Really, there are a multitude of writing blogs out there, and by people who have had much more success than I. So what do I do? Do I write about my life as if it were LiveJournal? Do I pick a theme and stick with that? Didn’t seem as if my music posts really went over that well, but I could find something else I guess. Maybe I could just use it as a portal for ALL of my projects. I don’t know, but expect it to evolve in the near future.

I hope you haven’t given up on me yet…