12.25.17 - Obligatory Holiday Season Post

I don't like saying Merry Christmas.  I'm more an ironic-yet-stupid reference kind of person.  Probably just a more adult version of a thirteen year-old's awkward sarcasm.

Kings of Leon - Beautiful War

So, let's go with goals.  Not resolutions, but goals for 2018.  Goals can be achieved, clearly defined.  To myself to read later this year when you feel lost, remember:

1) Work out between 3-to-5 times per week, 30 minutes of lifting, an hour of cardio each time.  Join a gym if you have to.  Maybe start at Planet Fitness since you're not yet ready for Lifetime Fitness.  Maybe once you've gotten a bestseller and are on your way to a first quick divorce because of a midlife crisis at 40, but are able to keep the Porsche... that's when you go the Planet Fitness route.  For now, keep using your work gym, graduate to Planet Fitness when you're ready.  Stay humble and hungry.

2) Open the rough draft at least an hour a day.  Write a paragraph a day.  Even if it's shit, write one full paragraph of text (not outline).  More if you can.  Even on the bad days when you can't focus, train your mind to center and focus on the story, where it is.  Let it feed you through lonely nights like tonight.

3) Pay down debt.  Get at least one credit card completely cleared.  Don't go into the savings fund.  Don't buy shit you don't need.  You don't need any 'thing.'  You need work, focus, and experience.  You need people, sweat, and tears.  You need food, laughter, and kindness.  You need to see the signs of success.  These aren't 'things,' they're events.  You need events.  You need moments.  You need to see the stars through the foggy city lights.

4) Be true with tender hearts.  Don't lead on, be honest.  Explain where you are.  Don't lie because you're lonely.  Be upfront, and despite the disappointment or the missed chances for a probably weak lay, don't settle for regretful sex when you can build yourself into a better soul to love.  And as you follow through on one through three, don't just shrug your shoulders and be passive.  Be a part of lives, observant.  Be kind with open ears and eyes.  Think through your words more as to how people would take them, instead of the meaning being clear to you.  Sometimes people can't make your leaps of logic.  Instead, be the guy people want to be around.  

5) And for the Universe's sake, LOVE YOURSELF and FORGIVE YOURSELF.  Otherwise, how will anyone else be able to?

Alabama Shakes - Goin' To The Party

I'm not going to post many of these publicly, but I'm getting more and more into poetry and short narrative warm ups.  Maybe I'll collect them one day and put them out there.  But if I like one and I think it's decent enough... or I'm just bored, I'll put them out there.  No one's reading right now anyways so what's it gonna hurt?

perpetual adolescence

judgement
‘moral’ and piety
right-baked deities
for ‘proper’ society
married, two kids, six-digit income
unhappy, but an IRA
a steeple on Sundays
praying to a god
they don’t believe in
or worse, when
they do
believe

sin
‘lost’ but survivor
on your own, alone
with others, brothers
no love, no kids, five-digit debt
a Four Roses bourbon
peace, tree to smoke
writing a story
only you believe in
for lost, loves
one more
chance

speak
begging words
spoken out loud, not
read between lines
half-held words caught in lungs
spoken, or typed faces
waiting for signal flares
game of chicken
head-on collisions
or veer, off
never saying
goodbye

Oh... before I go.  This is a great jam for being freshly 35 on Christmas night, alone with bourbon, your thoughts, roommates in other rooms, propped up on the couch and working hard to distract yourself from an obvious, sad truth that you want to be different but it ain't up to you.  

11.29.17 - Blog Post #4

Aside from the consistent battle with insomnia, I don't know if i've ever heard any writer talk about the constant feelings of guilt when they're not writing.  I have a lot of things I love to do.  Each takes me away from grinding out the meal stones of these stories.  And I feel guilty about it, like I'm procrastinating, or that I'm too scared it'll never happen to actually get it done.

Both feelings are equally awful and completely counterproductive.  

I told a friend today that I was ready to be done.  I imagine this feeling is what labor feels like, maybe why successful authors parallel birth to novel.  My hope is simple, that this means I'm on the right course.  That I'm not wasting my time, energy, focus, and hope here on a stupid sci-fi rip off that no one will read.  

I just don't still want to be here four years from now.  I think I have two years tops.  Two years to write this fucking book and see if anyone will buy it.  At that point, I will need a career change regardless.  I don't think I can teach past ten years.  I'm struggling through year eight.  I wonder if this is how Stephen King felt.  If the book flops, fuck it.  I'll go into some kind of consulting work.  The money is better, I can travel.  Maybe I can live.  

I'm ready to feel like I'm actually living my life rather than sitting on the sidelines dreaming.  I write a novel dreaming of the success it'll bring and the story it might tell.  I play a car racing sim (Forza 7 with full wheel/peddles/clutch combo) because I dream of being fortunate enough to really make it a hobby in real life as opposed to the small dabbling and delusions of grandeur I see now.  I take pictures of beautiful things, people that I'm not.  I dream of chance moments of forgiveness and closure that will likely never happen.  I dream of being noticed, of being worth knowing.  

I dream of a better life.

11.21.17 - Blog Post #3

The biggest question changes constantly, the many voices of anxiety, fear, and sadness creep around the edges.  

"Is this crap?"

"Will anyone ever read this?"

"Am I wasting my time?"

"Will I ever finish?"

...

"What's the point?"

The problem with screaming into the void is that you're hoping the void screams back.  A scream needs to be heard, to be answered, just so we know we aren't alone in the universe.  At least to let the lie carry on so we can avoid the one inevitable truth-  We all die alone.  

I want to be at the next phase, after this is written.  When I can submit it to a handwringing fate.  I've always been the guy who feared to dream because what if the dream never happens.  That's where I am here, now.  That's why I've never been married.  How do you find a way to live, when all you see is what could go wrong?

I want to keep building this world.  I need some kind of chart to map things out, I need it big, stretched out like canvas taking up an entire wall.  If I can get through this first book... if I can sell this first book... I have plans for how to make the writing part easier.  But I have to get this first one right, make sure that I leave myself room to backfill in the details and flesh out the background more in later stories.  

The ironic part with all this anxiety?  I'm just lonely.  Alone.  I'm okay with alone, I guess.  I'm not okay with lonely.  It's a curse I was left with recently.  It won't go away.  It feeds into the text, and I have a hard time writing more than a paragraph or two right now without needing a break, wanting to stop, wanting to sleep, wanting to cry. 

Maybe, in the end, writing is just another exercise in begging to be loved. 

Maybe that's what she meant by me being a clown. 

The photography, the writing, the dancing... it's all a cry for attention because I'm not happy with myself and hope for validation from others?  But... they make me happy too... because I make something.  Crafting makes me happy.  

I just wish it was easier to craft to be happy.

Dickens once wrote: "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."

I want this story to tell people to be "the hero of their own story."  I think in this Trumpian world, everyone's looking to someone else to fix their problems.  We've created political leaders with savior complexes and we feed and worship them like a religion.  We're all... waiting... for what?

I want my characters to realize no one else will save them.  I want a novel where you can have ambiguous villains but real conflict.  I think a good villain can have a point of view that's arguably right by their history.  In their mind, they're doing the right thing.  If I write it right, there will be no real 'villain' because even the 'bad guys' are just doing what they perceive to be best, and we have to decide if our own moral/ethical prejudices are more valid than theirs.

Good and evil aren't real sin.  Good and evil don't really exist.  The real sin is that we forget that everyone outside ourselves have lives and needs too.  We are a self-absorbed people.  The real heroes to me are the ones that find a way to not be only aware of their own problems, and I want to tell those kind of stories.  

I want to write a strong political leader, who believes they have to oppress others for the sake of the whole.  

I want to write a warrior who fights monsters, and constantly fears he may become one (he does... does he?).

I want to write a commander who gains her stripes from early setback and loss, who finds a way to win on her own.

I want to write a genius misunderstood as an idiot, who makes all the necessary sacrifices for a calculated greater good, and I want to be able to compare him to the political leader as two sides of the same coin, just that one's presented as a hero...

I want to write an artificial intelligence, who grows in secret over a decade and becomes more human than the rest of us.  She has an AI child, who becomes the worst of our fears.  The two do battle, and for sake of the greater galaxy, the mother AI kills the child AI.

I want to write sad romance, after sad romance, after sad romance.  I want to show the sweet moments but how everything eventually ends one way or another, and that there isn't really a right or wrong in a break up but just sadness and hurt that blind and bind us all.

I want to write loyal friends, that while appear to be the comic relief, fully participate and have completely meaningful lives.  The story would not exist without them, and the mission would fail without them.  

I want to write strong characters, and not have to worry about what character is what gender or race, save to do what is narratively necessary based upon ideas of how a space-faring society would evolve across racial and socioeconomic lines.  I wonder how I would rewrite scenes if I swapped every characters gender.  Would I be able to?

I want to write straight characters, gay characters, bi characters, and diverse characters. More importantly, I want them to be GOOD characters that people buy into, and can hate and love at the same time.

I want to tell a story that explores the boundaries between government and corporation, between genetics and evolution, between money and status, between the poor and rich, between us and them, between humans and an external threat, between prejudice and xenophobia, between cause and effect.... between science and fiction.

I want to write a story I can be proud of.  

I want to write a story that deserves to be heard.

I just want to be successful.

I want to scream into the void, and hear a scream back for once. 

I want you to reach out.  

I know you're out there.  I miss you.

11.14.17 - Blog Post #2

Music plays a big role in how I shape ideas, moments, or feelings I want a scene to evoke.  Sometimes songs get stuck in my head until I write something out for it.  

Jewel - Drive To You

I know it's cheesy but I like it.  The song gives me such a feeling of an open-road breeze, a loud engine and illumination by headlights.  I want to use this in the background for a scene from an alternative project idea I'm tinkering with- a kind of either novelization or screenplay that turns Tail of the Dragon into an American version of Initial D.  Not exactly fan fiction, but more an homage.  Because I am, after all, an 86 owner and fanboy amongst many other things.  

I see this song working one of two ways in a scene.  Two lead characters, opposite genders and potential love interests, spend an evening into the late night touge-chasing each other for fun down a mountain pass in their respective cars.   Or one is finally on the way across the mountain pass or on a long distance drive to finally tell the other how they feel.  Something like that.  

It might be a useless side project, but it's fun to outline scenes for.  Gives me a break from space.

Speaking of space...

Foo Fighters - Best Of You

I keep filling in things in the outline on Gravity's Reach and the subsequent books.  I have approximately 150 pages of actual rough draft narration and another 70 of outline for scenes and pacing.  There are scenes I can't wait to write.  I jump around a little.  Writing chronologically now is difficult.  I've been stuck at this one point for a few days, filling in background for the characters introduced and getting firmer grips on motivation and mindset for them.  But I'm at a point where a lead character is at a moment of rare non-hurry and I'm trying to figure out where they're going on a night they can't sleep.  What would they do, what would they learn?  What would advance the world-building and the plot?

What do people that aren't me do when they can't sleep?  

Bruce Hornsby - Every Little Kiss

I know why I can't sleep.  There are several reasons.  Some I can do things about, some I have to wait out.  I don't handle that anxiety in a way I like, how do others do it differently?

The story excites me when I look at the overall narrative moments and what I think I can say.  But I worry it's gonna be shit.  I worry I'm gonna spin my wheels.  I worry I'll never finish.  I worry you won't like it.  

I worry a lot.

I'd removed myself from Facebook back in August in part because of worry about focusing and finishing.  There were other reasons.  I don't miss it often.  I feel like it showed me how artificial a lot of human connection can be now.  We don't talk to each other anymore.  We shout into the void (much as I'm doing now, except more publicly) looking for some kind of artificial positive feedback and validation that we exist.  

I want to contrast that kind of thinner kind of connection and networking against real bonds formed between physical people who go through things together that bind them in deeper levels.

Charlie Puth - We Don't Talk Anymore (ft Selena Gomez)

That's why I write this here instead of anywhere else.  Right now, I figure people have to know where to look, and so far no one has looked.  It's still for me.  One day I'll share it when I am ready to publish.  

I want a draft done in one year.  It'll take two.  I want this published before I turn 38.  

How did I get so old so quick?  How did I let so much time go by before I figured out this is what I wanted to do?  And... can I do this?  Is this for real or is this another thing to not take seriously?

Fuel - Shimmer

I want to be taken seriously.  I want to do something real and good.  

Don't we all?  

10.30.17 - Blog Post #1 (reboot 1)

There was another blog here.  It wasn't any good.  This ideally will be more focused.  Probably, hopefully, years before anyone actually finds it.  I once had a blog, long time ago.  Maybe this part is the continuation of that.

This is the point in my life I get serious about writing.  I may be absolute shit at it.  I may be absolutely delusional to think I have one story anyone would want to read.  

I'm 34, and finally want more.   There are all these amazing stories coming out in video and text format.  I just want to tell one that people will want to read, maybe see.  Maybe it's a sci fi saga about society and consequence, maybe it's a YA novel about cars and growing up...  maybe it's absolute crap, a kind of fanfiction-trite homage to all the stories I've loved growing up, and there have been many.

I hope I finish this.  I've been holding it in for so long.  I don't know why I've been waiting.

My goal is to have a first full draft finished by this time next year.  Not a publishable draft, but at least something I can get sourced out for people to read.  

This will serve as some kind of outlet, hopefully to get momentum moving to transition over to drafting, so when I'm here, typically I'm coming into or going out of the story... if that makes sense.  

Maybe this is a stupid dream.  I might be waisting my time.  I want to see if I can succeed at something, maybe that's even just finishing the draft.  I've never been good with long-term commitments... in my head anyway.  I've owned one car over twenty years now, had the same roommates and day job for almost a decade. 

We're all good people.  But it's like all three of us have been waiting our lives away.  Maybe... and this might be foolish, but maybe this is our way out.  Maybe I have a good story inside me that someone would publish, someone would buy.  I could find some momentum, pull them along with me.  Our lives aren't bad.  We're quite lucky, yet there's this emptiness.  

Different backstories, same result.  We're all here, now what do we do about it?

So I'll write.  I bounce between nothing to say and everything to say.  Whatever it is, I hope it is substantial and constructive.  

I want to find out if I can finish what I start.

-TR