January 2023 Updates

Update time! I still plan on going through the essays from NOVELIST AS A VOCATION. I'm still going through the the book, actually! But I figure it was time to check in again.

One of the things about blogging, and recording your process in general, is that when you have a lot of things going on that it can turn into just another thing that takes away from the time you could be using to create. So lately, I've been prioritizing actually creating stuff in the time I have available, which has resulted in some pretty great results.

First, my current novel project is at 36,395 words and moving steadily along. I'll go more into detail about this when I get to the relevant essay from NOVELIST AS A VOCATION, but treating my writing time as a more physical act that has to be accomplished every day has been very effective in keeping my numbers flowing.

One takeaway I'll share now, though, is something I'm tentatively naming "READER/WRITER TIME DILATION."

One of the things I struggle with in the writing process is chugging along and wondering if something is dragging on too long or is taking too much time. I don't want to bore the reader, and pacing is very important to me.

In the past, I've often struggled in continuing on in a project when I feel like I hit a lull in the story and what I'm writing is super boring. So then I pause and think about it, and hope that I can figure out why it's so boring and what I can do to change it. If I'm unable to do this within a certain amount of time, though, I end up dropping the project or letting it sit around until I can figure out the problem with it again.

With my new method, though, which helps me push the words out even though I may not be feeling it at a particular moment, I started to realize that there's a dilation of time in how I'm experiencing the events and vs how the reader will.

My current write speed is about 1,600 words per hour.

The average adult reads about 250-300 words per minute, which equates to 15,000 to 18,000 words per hour.

That means I'm experiencing the story TEN TIMES SLOWER than the reader will!

That means realistically when I'm laboring over what I'm writing and going "good grief, is someone really going to want to read this for an hour", I shouldn't be. They'll be through it in about 6 minutes.

So now I don't worry about how long it takes to write something.

--

"Ayo, where's all the audio stuff though?"

It's coming. I've actually been working on another audio project on the side, something I don't think I've mentioned publicly. The only reason I've even mentioning it here is that it's almost ready to launch. So that's been cutting into podcast editing speed and scheduling recordings with guests etc.

I used to tear myself up about not being able to focus on one project at a time, feeling like I was letting people down because I wasn't treating one project or another like a job. But I'm just one person working on all this stuff. And if I start trying to change who I am, none of this is fun anymore.

And there's a real solid benefit for me, creatively, to jumping around a bit. The other day I was coming in from work and suddenly the problems in Jane 3 clicked into place. While working on other things, my creative subconscious apparently worked out what now seems to be a very obvious solution. So I'm excited to go back and work on that once this novel project is at least done its first draft.

I think that's all for now. Or at least that's all I can think of since my 4 year old is poking me in the back of the head asking me to pour her milk.

L8r sk8trs.

REVIEW AND THOUGHTS: Novelist as a Vocation - "Are Novelists Broad-minded?"

This is my blog post series on NOVELIST AS A VOCATION by Haruki Murakami. I'm documenting my thoughts on each of the essays and the things I've learned about myself and my process.

--

"Are Novelists Broad-minded?"

Murakami's first essay opens up with the idea that he does not have any fear about new novelists entering the field, that he welcomes them with open arms because he feels that novels are not a zero-sum game, and ultimately writing a novel is a difficult thing and deserves his respect. And at this point in the essay, I'm following along pretty well.

And then it takes a turn I wasn't expecting (sasuga, Murakami-sensei). He writes:

"The way I see it, people with brilliant minds are not particularly well suited to writing novels."

I'm sorry, what? I mean, "brilliant mind" is one of those terms that is thrown about with all the great novelists. But Murakami continues to explain that one does need a certain level of intelligence and education, but, he says:

"[...] anyone with a quick mind or an inordinately rich store of knowledge is unlikely to become a novelist. That is because the writing of a novel, or the telling of a story, is an activity that takes place at a slow pace. "

"[...] Someone whose message is clearly formed has no need to go through the many steps it would take to transpose that message into a story. All he has to do is put it directly into words - it's much faster and can be easily communicated to an audience. [...]The listener will slap his knee and marvel, "Why didn't I think of that?" In the final analysis, that's what being smart is really about.

In the same vein, it is unnecessary for someone with a wealth of knowledge to drag out a fuzzy, dubious container like the novel for his purpose."

This. Hit me. So. So. Hard.

--

I have a lot going on in my life. I know I'm not alone in that, but I have to list it all out so you can understand where I'm coming from.

I have four kids and a wife, all with their own needs from me. I want to be a good husband and a good father, so I won't ignore them. I spend time with them. More importantly, I spend time thinking about how I can fulfill those roles better for each of them.

I work as an administrator in public education. It's a stressful job, but it's also one I care about. I spend time doing the job, but I also spend a lot of time thinking about the job, even when I'm not there.

I have to take care of the dog, because I'm the only one who will walk her consistently.

I have a podcast to schedule, record, edit, and maintain.

And there's other aspects of my life (like anyone's) that are complex and time consuming and generally a hindrance to doing creative work.

There's not a lot of time in my day to write. In fact, time management and time optimization is kind of obsessive for me. You only have to go look at blog posts from July and August of 2022 to see that.

But I'm also able to keep all these things (and more) balanced because I'm a really fast thinker. I can process information and accomplish stuff, generally speaking, faster than most people I work with or know. If I couldn't, I would've given up all this stuff a long time ago by necessity.

But because this is such a valuable skill in my day-to-day life, I somehow concluded that I needed to do all my creative work the same way - faster, better, more brilliant, more efficient. And I was seduced by some ideas and some writing communities - from the generally harmless NaNoWriMo to groups like 20 book to 50K, which said that if you can write and publish 20 books you could generate 50,000 in passive income. This was a group that used phrases like "lowest viable product" - meaning "what's the crappiest novel you can write and still get away with it."

So I trained, and copied, and outlined, and regimented and tried to get my brain to churn out the highest quality story I could in the shortest possible amount of time.

I was trying to do what Murakami is saying is impossible.

--

Murakami concludes his observations that novels are a bad way to communicate ideas by writing:

"An extreme way of putting it is that the novelists might be defined as a breed who feel the need, in spite of everything, to do that which is unnecessary."

I've talked about this before, but I've tried to quit writing. Twice. It didn't stick. I have to do it. And, it turns out, I have to do it the way I've always done it. By the seat of my pants, in a meandering, inefficient way where I barely know what's going to happen next. And then I will rewrite it. And rewrite it. And rewrite it. And then eventually there might be something worthwhile at the end.

Because that's the only way I've ever really finished something and felt very proud of it. And it was the only way I've had the most fun.

--

This essay really made me have to go back and have a hard look at myself, and to realize that the parts of my brain that make me effective in so many arenas is not the same one that will make me effective in novel writing. It made me accept what I had been trying to reject and reform.

I got the book on December 1. I read this somewhere between the 2nd and the 4th.

By December 13th, I was already back at writing my newest novel.

These essays have been gold, but if nothing else, this first one would have been worth the cost.

—

Study Questions: Do you agree with Murakami’s assertion that a novel is an inefficient container for ideas?

How do the quoted lines make you feel about your own work?

December Updates - Blog and Podcast

I am shocked at how quickly this month has moved along. I have had a lot of things working in the background - including a bunch of blog posts - and even though I FEEL like everything is moving at a good pace, time just...keeps going!

So there is more promised blog writing coming up, in particular my review of the essays found in NOVELIST AS VOCATION by Haruki Murakami. Murakami has been an inspiration of mine for years, his fiction is surreal and beautiful and makes me feel weird in a way that nobody else can, like I've woken from a dream that feels somehow very important.

But more importantly, his book WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING was one of my favorite pieces of non-fiction, so to have him dedicate a whole book to talking about writing as a career was really exciting. Thankfully, Nick was on the ball and told me about it (thanks Nick!).

I've gotten about halfway through it, and it was my intention to write a blog post about each essay after I finished reading it and dissecting it. The problem is, the first half has been so amazingly transformational for me that I started WRITING A NOVEL and that has taken a lot of time I would've normally been doing blog posts.

Also, if you're a frequent blog post reader, you'll note that a lot of my posts are drafted while I'm walking the dog. It has been too cold (for me, a Californian) to walk the dog some days (she's not a cold weather dog so anything below 45F (7C) is out of the question), and even if I do walk I don't have the willpower to dictate a blog post, since I'm spending most of my time thinking "wow it's so cold out here when do I get to go inside again."

--

"Ah, a novel!" you say to yourself. It is not Jane 3. It's something else entirely, though it's composed of pieces of things I had been working on over 2021 when we were still mostly in lockdown (and some things from like 2010). I don't want to talk more about it. I'm very superstitious about my novel writing process, and one of my rules is that I can't talk about it until it's done.

I think it has to do with something about the mental satisfaction of the task. There was research about something one time that said that if you tell someone a cool idea you have for a creative work and they say "wow that's so cool!" that part of your brain has checked it off as "oh, okay, that's done then." Because you got the positive feedback you were craving as a creative, even though you didn't actually do any of the work.

I'm very easily influenced by that sort of thing, so I need to keep my mouth shut.

--

PODCAST UPDATE!

If you're not a Discord member, then you don't yet know that Matt had COVID through November, and thus we ran out of episodes. I have some guest stuff cooking up and had planned on releasing it throughout December, but again December has sort of ambushed me. One of the guest episodes (it'll be two, actually) is already recorded and will be up for the yearly December 23rd release to help those of you who are travelling or need a distraction from all the other holiday chaos.

The second will probably drop in Jan, then I will need to record the other guest episode, and then hopefully regular recordings with Matt will resume.

ALSO, the first recording of STAR WARS BOOK CLUB will probably happen in January. I'm not sure if that'll be Patreon or main feed (probably start on Patreon and then eventually go to main feed) but I'm excited about that. Leslie, Nick, Seamus and I are reading the classic ROGUE SQUADRON by Michael A. Stackpole. I've been listening to the audio version, which is VERY GOOD. It has music and sound effects!

--

That's it for now. Only one more day of work and then hopefully some breathing room for everything else.

Intentional Practice, (Part 2!)

A brief history.

Bored and inspired, I wrote my first novel when I was 15. It was Final Fantasy VII smashed together with Legend of Zelda and Star Wars. It was pretty bad.

I wrote a bunch of fanfiction and RP posts after that.

In 2007, I decided to write for real. I wrote another novel. I wrote it again. I wrote it again. I knew I had to get better, but I didn't know how, and I knew I wasn't using any of the intentional practice methods I had become so familiar with when I was in music and martial arts.

Writing for Dummies.

No, I didn't actually use "Writing for Dummies." I used "The Secrets" by Michael A. Stackpole.

Yeah, that one. The one that wrote all the Rogue Squadron books.

Back in the 00s, he had a newsletter called "The Secrets" that was all of his writing advice. I bought the back catalogs and then subscribed to the newer issues. I think the last one I got was volume 121. I don't know if he still makes them or not.

I read all 121 one of these things. It was great! It had all of the basics down on how to think of constructing a book, how to construct chapters and characters and worldbuilding. I still use his "blitzkrieg characterization" method and still adhere to his rule that a chapter should be between 2,500 and 3,000 words long (though sometimes I fudge it and go to 2,000.)

But as Uncle Iroh says, wisdom from only one source becomes stale. It was a great introduction to having an orderly way of approaching writing, but I knew I had to grow past it.

I can't remember the exact order, but I know after that I read The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp, On Writing by Steven King, and then a bunch of articles by Ray Bradbury which had particular generalizations on how to write (read one essay, one short story, and one poem a day and write one short story a week.) I read the advice from Vonnegut (the 8 rules and his 6 story shapes.) I read a book about NaNoWriMo written by the creator(s?) of NaNoWriMo. I read portions of Hero of a Thousand Faces, but honestly that thing is DENSE.

I read pretty much every blog post I could find on writing advice back in the day. I absorbed all that was out there in the world and tried it all out. I tried the Snowflake Method. I tried the 30 Day Method. I tried the 5 Step Method.

But all this stuff is general. They're broadstrokes of how to do things, or ways to organize your thoughts. It doesn't really teach you how to directly improve on particular skills.

So I just started making my own up.

Practice in Front of An Audience

Andy J. Pizza's Creative Pep Talk talks a lot about practicing your craft in front of an audience. Of course, he didn't exist in that format back in the 00s, so I kinda stumbled into it. I found a place to practice.

A Naruto RP board.

Yep. Naruto.

It's been deleted, which is too bad because I had a lot of stuff written on there, but it was a good place to write a lot and have fun. It was prose-based, so no rules, no stats, etc. If there was a "real" battle, a judge would be assigned to determine if someone went too far in their writing of damage, etc.

As far as I know, though, I was the only one on there that was trying to write and publish books. Most were on there for fun, so I was a lot better than a lot of people. That meant I never had a shortage of people that wanted to write with me, but it also meant I had a lot of people asking me how to improve. But they didn't want Vonnegut's 8 rules, they wanted to know how to write their combat sequences more vividly or how to make more interesting characters. I didn't really know how, I just sort of did it.

So I had to systemize what I was doing so I could teach it to other people.

Teaching someone else is the best way to refine what you do. I wasn't even thinking of going into teaching yet, but I really enjoyed the process.

I did a video/stream a while back on Obvious + Anti-Obvious. This was invented from this time period, when I was trying to explain how to come up with more interesting RP characters.

I went through my Dropbox and I found a bunch of graphics I made to help people improve. I had a battle chart on how to write a battle when the enemy is stronger, weaker, or the same strength as you AND how to write it if the enemy is taking the battle seriously vs non-seriously.

I found a flow-chart I made on how to backwards plot.

I had a rule called "Always the Third Option" where whatever I was thinking of a particular plot options that the third one I made was the best one.

I also did the "52 week project," which is based on Bradbury's advice. I challenged everyone to write a short story based on a prompt every week. I can't remember how far I got - I think I got into the 30s? For some reason, my old Dropbox only has three saved on it. I wonder why I saved those three.

Concluding the Past

I've been working on this post for a few days now, going through all of my old notebooks, trying to find other drills I did. I can remember some, but I didn't keep very good records of stuff. Some of that is probably for the best - I need to be working on new things, not rehashing old ones. I will say that one of the biggest constants in my notebooks is the use of freewriting, which is probably something that merits its own post at some point.

In the meantime, though, I'm grateful for all the work I did in the past, and I all the work I've done to get here. I'm excited to see what my newest methods produce.

Dream problems

I was standing in a room full of people I didn't really like listening to this idiot talk about how cool a nickname "Zanario" was (pronounced like "scenario.")

This was infuriating because that's not how it was supposed to be pronounced. It was supposed to be "Zanarino" and this doofus was clearly dropping an N. I wanted to say something, but I figured it wasn't worth causing a scene over it. Still, I was extremely irritated.

And then I woke up.

--

This is not a post about achieving my big dreams. This is a post about the actual dreams I have in my sleep.

And how much I hate them.

By and large, my sleep has been pretty dreamless for about ten years - not coincidentally around the same time I had my first child. Sure, in sleep deprivation I would have crazy dreams about a baby crying or whatever, but most of the time my sleep was completely, blissfully, empty void.

There are five exceptions.

The first three are recurring dreams that happen with varying intensity and frequency. One is that I somehow have to go back to high school and fix some credits I missed. One is me in a massive hotel that I've been to many times before. I can never remember what I'm doing there, but I know a few times I was riding a go-kart on a gravel path next to a very high cliff.

Then there's one where I'm fighting a white mountain lion.

The fourth exception is just general stress dreams that everyone gets when work is piling on. That usually takes the form of me being some version of my current job in some amalgamation of the different schools I've worked at with various combinations of different students and colleagues I've had. Those are irritating too, but everyone has stress dreams.

The fifth exception is the one time dreaming was actually useful and I dreamt the whole story of I summoned a ghost to be my girlfriend.

Other than that, not a lot of dreams going on.

Until recently.

--

From 2011 to about 2016, I was able to run off of 4 hours of sleep.

Around 2016, I started needing 6 regularly.

Then when I got COVID last year, that 6 seemed to turn into 7.

It used to be that after 6, I would wake up, and if I somehow slept past that (like into 7 or 8 hour territory), that's when I would dream. Just the usual nonsense, meaningless dreams that leave you more confused than anything. It didn't happen that often, so it didn't bother me that much.

But now for some reason I wake up after about four hours after having a really irritating dream, like this morning's zanario/zanarino nonsense. Then I have to try and go back to sleep for a couple more hours, and sometimes I have ANOTHER dream!

I wonder if this is because I'm actually taking care of myself. My stress levels are way low right now thanks to my new decision and dedication to slow productivity. I've also noticed I'm not needing to be as constantly distracted as before. I sometimes turn off podcasts while I'm walking the dog. Sometimes I drive in silence.

I wonder what other side effects from this new way of doing this will have.

...though if there was a way to get rid of these stupid dreams, I'd be happy about it.

Intentional Practice (Part 1!)

The first phase in my re-dedication to massively improving my writing ability is to start practicing again. I invented my series of practice methods about 10 years ago (from 2007-2011 was my most intense years of practice), so I’m re-using some old drills, using new ones, and being very analytical about how I improve. I’ll be sharing both what I used to do and what I’m doing now in the next few blog posts.

Today is about my first phase of my current intentional practice.

First, what is intentional practice?

The most useful and most useless advice you can get about writing is “just write a lot.” Because, it’s true, if you don’t write a lot, you can’t get better at writing. And if you’re kinda new at it and you don’t have the “magical million words” that supposedly “makes you good”, then you do need to put in the brute force effort of stringing words together.

But if you’re trying to get much better much faster, blindly writing won’t do it. Writing isn’t just one thing - it’s a lot of decisions that you’re making simultaneously while drafting, a lot of different skills that you’re using at one time. If you don’t have those individual skills refined, then your ability to write is always going to be hindered by your weakest skills.

A lot of complex skills are like this: music, martial arts, etc. Those of course are two areas that I underwent extensive training, so when I was first trying to improve my writing ability, I used a lot of the practice concepts that I learned from those arenas.

So, intentional practice is noting your weak areas and intentionally taking steps to improve them.

The problem of intentional practice and writing

It’s easy to intentionally practice in music because the skills are easily defined (theory, dexterity, scales, breath control, tone, intonation, interpretation, etc). The same with martial arts (striking, grappling, leverages, pressure points, weapons, etc.)

It’s less clear with writing.

Yes, there are some general concepts that everyone agrees upon as being important. But the wonderful thing about writing is that there is so much variation in how it can be done. One person’s purple prose can be another person’s sweeping descriptions that carry them off into a new world. One person’s overly-complex info dump can be another person’s ideal worldbuilding.

Beyond that, there aren’t always a lot of systemized ways of improving these things. I’ve read a bunch of writing books, took a writing class, hired a developmental editor…and nobody has a “this is what you should do” checklist of ways to practice. So when I say I “invented” it, it’s not that I came up with all the drills that I’ll talk about, but I did try to organize them into a system based on my past training AND the intervening ten years of working in education where I focus on how people learn and improve.

My current “step 1.”

The first step is to identify your weak areas. I kinda know what they are, but if I’m going to be intentional, I need to be systematic. So my current step 1 is to reread Heart and Soul Fist and Spirits of Summer and analyze them. I’ve organized the analysis into three major areas with subcategories.

PLOT, with the subcategories of “Tension” and “Pacing.’

CHARACTER, with the subcategories of “Dialog” “Mannerisms” and “Descriptions”

SETTING, with the subcategories of “Descriptions” “Worldbuilding”

And THEME (which will be its own post later).

Then, I’m reading Heart and Soul Fist chapter by chapter and taking notes on what I did well and what needed improvement, just any general thoughts I have. Then I score myself in those categories, on a scale of 1-4 (based on the latest thinking in Mastery and Equity Grading that I’m a massive believer in).

1 = Not proficient

2 = Approaching proficiency

3 = Proficient

4 = Mastery

I mark all my scores down and then average them out (which, averaging isn’t really that useful in grading theory these days, but I’m curious to see what the ultimate average of the averages will be at the end of the book and if it matches with how I feel about it.) Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like.

A chapter scorecard.

I’m then recording all these scores into a master table.

The overall record of scores.

Once I’m done that, I’ll do the same for Spirits of Summer and compare all the scores and see if A) I improved from one book to the next and B) what areas are my weakest and what I need to practice on.

Next time, I’ll detail some other things I’m doing (like the Hyperbolic Write Chamber) and talk about my routines in the past. If you have any specific questions, though, let me know!

Study Questions:

1. Have you ever intentionally practiced anything? What area was it? What lessons did you gain from it?

2. In general, how do you feel about claims that people need to “write a million words” or “spend 10,000 hours” to become an expert at something?

Declaration of Intent for Greatness

A couple of weeks ago, I heard a Blinkist from productivity expert Rowenna Tsai that was called "save your sanity with slow productivity."

I won't go into details (just look her up or Cal Newport on YouTube to get the full explanation), but the idea can be distilled down to "measure your goals in months and years, not hours and days."

If you've been reading the blog a bit, you'll remember that last summer I wrote about how I felt I had lost my "mission" and my "why" for writing. This resulted in me attempting to, once again, figure out how to multiply my output, make my life more efficient, become a one-person media machine. And it went okay.

For a bit.

But you'll also see me struggle with the phases of rest and recovery, and struggle with the fact that I constantly start up books and shut them down, a habit I've had forever. I've always thought this as a weakness - that I was too fickle, too picky, or just lacked will power. That somehow to finish one, it had to be "special."

So when this concept of slow productivity came up, I started to really think about if I measured myself in months and years rather than days and hours, what would I be measuring? What was it that I ACTUALLY WANTED to accomplish?

Fame?

Money?

For the last couple of years, I think it was money. There's a portion of the self-publishing world that focuses on maximum output for maximum cash, creating what they call a "lowest viable product" - basically a book that's "good enough" for voracious readers to read, not hate, and come back for more later. After all, it can take a mega-author a year to write a book and then their super-fan will read it in an a day. Those readers need more things to read, and you can fill in those gaps.

But I have to be realistic. While I do daydream about a life where I walk the dog, drop off the kids, and then sit around and write all day...that's not going to happen soon. Even if I hit some level of commercial success, my family needs medical insurance, and school districts are still one of the best places to get high-quality insurance in America. So I'll be dong the day job thing for a long while yet.

If that's the case, then what's my rush? Why would I train myself to churn out mediocre literary junk food?

Why not reach for something bigger?

Why not shoot for greatness?

This is the Declaration of Intent for Greatness. I no longer am content to coast where I am. I will now be actively working to push myself to the next level, to see if I can go toe-to-toe with the best writers out here.

It's been a long time since I've pushed myself. The last time I did major training was from 2007-2011, and I grew explosively in that time. Now it's time to see if I can do it again.

Maybe it'll take years.

Maybe I'll never get there.

But I have to try.

I'll be blogging about my process so you can follow along.

STUDY QUESTIONS

1. When was the last time you pushed yourself? How did it go?

2. What do you think prevents people from pushing themselves? Are some people simply happier and more content with their lives than others?

Disruption

Dictation. Writing on my phone. Writing by hand.

All of these methods are inferior, for me, than using a keyboard. But over the last month I’ve been forcing myself to use all three methods more frequently as a form of habit disruption.

(In fact, I’m writing this post on my 3x5 memo pad.)

Finding a groove and workflow is important, but disrupting it intentionally helps me because:

1. Different writing methods seem to change my phrasing. Writing by dictation results in something more conversational. Writing on my phone produces shorter sentences with less complex punctuation (because I can’t be bothered to find all the symbols in all the submenus). Writing by hand is more outliney and I tend to be more thoughtful about my word choices. And when I eventually have to type it all out (like I’m doing at this exact moment) the writing gets one automatic round of editing.

2. Reduction in distraction. My computers do too much, and I’m too “good” at “multitasking.” When I was on full novelist mode between 2009 and 2011, I used an old PowerBook G4 that had no battery life and was constantly overheating and couldn’t really use the internet that well. All I used it for was typing in the Text Editor, and it helped keep me focused. I can’t open a browser tab when I’m writing on a piece of paper, so it improves my concentration.

3. It’s easier to stealth write. I’ve talked about this before, but if you’re on a phone, people think you’re wasting time or being distracted with something. If you’re writing in a notebook, people think you’re doing something important. You can write during work meetings, social gatherings, whatever! I’m writing this post at a birthday party my daughter was invited to. Sure it may be “weird” and some people might even say it’s “rude” but at least it appears to be intellectual.

Even though these three ways of writing aren’t the fastest or produce my best work, I’ve actually gotten more writing done as a result of using them. So, intentional disruption can be a good thing!

Study Questions:

1. What is a way you can disrupt how you do things?

2. What possible changes might you see?

Minimum of three sentences each, due Friday.