#amwriting

On the Productivity Problem

I took today off work specifically so I could spent today writing. I did not write a single word until just now, when I wrote, “I took today off work.”

I had a very productive day, as far as my heart, my soul, my mind, my body. I read the writing of David Foster Wallace for the first time (a fact I am both proud and ashamed to admit). I read more chapters of Walden(which has been so life-changing for me, I will not diminish it here with commentary; just read it, like now). I took a walk, practiced Tai Chi, gave myself a Qi Gong tapping massage, and ate no meat. I cleaned the apartment and sufficiently snuggled all three cats. I listened to a Radiolab podcast that made me cry my way through a sandwich and realize a level of therapeutic purging I did not know I needed. I did many things today that enriched me as a writer, and yet I did no writing.

I’m having a productivity problem. More specifically, I have a finishing problem. I feel like Sozi; I am Sozi. I have a million ideas, each one a seed, and I want to see that tree so badly that I plant them all in the ground, give them some water, see that first shoot of green, and marvel—but in moments I’ve found another seed.

I have this fancy notebook and this fancy pen, and I only write in the fancy notebook with the fancy pen, and I only write in the notebook fiction or fiction-related ideas. (Other creative types may recognize this affected ritual in which we find comfort.) It’s my ideas journal, sometimes drunken rambling diary, sometimes observation record, sometimes organizer and planner. But it’s all in the name of some present or future fiction. I flipped back through its pages today and realized I started it almost exactly a year ago, give or take 11 days. It’s filled just over halfway with seeds, saplings, and one full-grown tree. Notes for at least four novels are in there, and about the same number of short story sprouts.

I have to admit that I have three active novels in various states of undress, and I feel like I am doing everything in the world not to work on them. I have one novel that is, at this point, 95% done. But I want to work on it less than I want to do almost anything else in the world, including cleaning the litter boxes of aforementioned three cats. I really love everything about it, except I hate that I wrote it instead of something more “important.” I almost can’t work on it because it makes me feel this crippling self-doubt that I may never be the writer I want to be, and if I finish and publish this book I am somehow carving that in stone.

I have a second novel that is fully drafted as a novella, and merely needs to be extended in accordance with the fully detailed outline contained in my fancy notebook. Much of the work is done. But the story itself is extremely depressing and I find I cannot work on it without feeling that the sadness of the material will seep into the edges of my life and I may lose what sense of peace and happiness I’ve worked so hard to attain. I also worry that if I publish such a story I will be bringing sadness into a reader’s life, instead of hope and enlightenment. Again, I feel like it would make me dishonest in my most basic intentions as a writer.

The third novel in progress is the least far along. I have a full outline and a few fragments, but there are more than likely years of work left on it. Yet this is the one I can’t stop thinking about. I dream about it. Everything I read or watch on television or talk about over a beer seems directly relevant to the story I want to tell with this book. In my head it’s already done, and I am sometimes surprised when I notice only about 10 pages are written down. But every time I feel the urge to work on it, I mentally chastise myself for not working to finish the others that are so close, that I am procrastinating from my other work with this work out of some fucked up fear of success/fear of failure syndrome. . . . And so it becomes a cycle, and I work on nothing. 

Just last week I was telling a friend how I thought I was done with the short story form and at heart I am really a novelist and I ought to really just focus on novels. And instead of novelling, I just finished the first short story I’ve written in years. I also wrote a screenplay, for crying out loud. I don’t write screenplays. I’ve taken procrastination to a weird new extreme wherein it is actually making me productive at things I don’t think I want to do.

Perhaps I finally turned to the short story and the short screenplay because they were pieces I could finish. I kind of want to write another short story; I already have the idea. It’s in the fancy notebook. But, like something near the horizon, I sniff the pressure and doubt on the wind. If I write two short stories, I really ought to write eight more so that I can publish a full collection. And if it’s going to be a collection, there ought to be some thematic thread. Sure, these first two go together, but what if I can’t come up with any more that match? Why bother writing the second if I can’t write the third, fourth, fifth . . . ?

So you see the spiral. I believe it’s a product directly related to my acute awareness of the passing of time, and of my own mortality. It took me 15 years to put out my first book. I don’t have very many chunks of time that long left. I don’t actually think it will take me 15 years to finish my next book, but at this rate, who knows? Maybe it is the fear of success/fear of failure. Maybe it’s the sophomore slump to the wildly mediocre success of my freshman try.

I want to say I don’t know the solution. I want to whine some more, bitch and moan, and google “motivation for writers.” I want to blame. But I do know the solution. You can see it, a few paragraphs above. The story that I dream about? The story I wake up thinking about? That’s the story I need to write. I shouldn’t care that I only have 10 pages done. I can only write one word at a time. I just need to do that, every chance I get, until I’m done.

A friend recently asked me for some motivation advice. I wrote back something that may or may not have actually been helpful, but I am positive it reeked from the overconfidence of someone who never ever suffers writer's block--which, as you can see, is patently false. The advice I ultimately ended with was "Write now. Right now." I should take my own advice. And that’s why this post will end so suddenly.

iBooked!

TWMD has been iBooked! Search iTunes or the store in the iBook app to find your copy.

iBook Update

The War Master's Daughter has officially shipped to Apple! It should be available as an iBook about one week from now. I will keep you posted right here.

If you can't wait for the iBook, don't forget that today is the last day to get the eBook from Smashwords for 67% off! Use coupon code SK65L.

This Book is Top-Shelf

I just got the exciting news that The War Master's Daughter will be included in Smashword's Premium Distribution Catalog. This increases the book's availability to a variety of outlets, including 32 foreign countries. But most exciting is that it will be available as an iBook as soon as next week! Having recently succumbed to the siren's call that is the iPad, I know this is a market I want to be in. TWMD eBook may also soon be coming to a library near you! Make sure to request it at your local branch.

But in the interim, the eBook is available in a variety of tablet-friendly formats, including for the Kindle Reader. And if you download from Smashwords, you can get your copy for 67% off the list price--this week only! Use coupon code SK65L.

The Intellectual Pleasures of Draw Something

My coworker told me, “Download Draw Something and watch your next 3 hours disappear.” I did exactly that, marveling that anything save heroin and cigarettes could be quite as addictive as purported. Like 14 million other users, I was immediately and almost irreparably hooked on the game, which is a colorful, capacitive-screen update of the classic Pictionary.

At first I was rather rudimentary in my drawings—turning out good-enough hieroglyphs for friends and strangers to guess. Then I took a turn with an especially creative friend who rendered me a werewolf with more character than you see on a CBS sitcom. Then on tumblr, I stumbled upon some truly inspired Drawn Somethings. I suddenly realized this game could be so much more. To paraphrase a statement I read online but cannot readily source, “Draw Something is like commissioning tiny paintings from my friends.” Once I got an iPad, I reveled in going completely overboard to render something simple.

My hours on Draw Something have yet to rival Angry Birds levels of obsessiveness, but I admit to spending more than a healthy amount of time playing. All this time has got me thinking about why this game fascinates me so much. Its addictive properties are well documented, but my brain has been tickling: Does the game get in touch with something deeper about our minds and our culture? And why do I like it so darn much. So here is some of what Draw Something represents to me.

The Psychology of Symbolism

I’m a classically trained artist. The number one rule drilled into my head during my decade and a half of arts education was not to symbolize. In other words, draw what you see not what you think you see. Eschewing symbolism was tremendous for my ability to render from reality, allowing me to excel in portraiture.

But symbolism is exactly what makes art so communicative. It’s why we can communicate with images that are not photographs—paintings, cartoons, and Draw Something doodles alike. Our brains combine information from various sources to create a unified interpretation of an image, even if we have never seen that image before. Certain shapes, colors, objects, etc. signify meaning within and among cultures.

Much of this symbolism is learned, through experience, education, and acculturation. This aspect of Draw Something fascinated me because it emphasized how I share intellectual and cultural development with other people (more on this in a bit). But even more fascinating to me is our shared ability to interpret symbols even beyond what we are taught. For example, it takes just three marks to make a face.

:)

It doesn't look anything like a face; however, the signifier is undeniable. But it’s not something we’re taught, like the Pythagorean Theorum; it’s actually a skill we’re born with. Babies can recognize faces (as distinct from non-faces) at just 3 months old. Moreover, studies demonstrate that humans have a unique, inherited, genetic ability to recognize faces where none should reasonably exist.

Intellectually, we know this

  looks absolutely nothing like this

But our evolutionary instincts take over and translate the symbol—in case, you know, that face is someone trying to steal your food or kill your young. It’s also why all three of these examples work equally well to convey meaning:

In a strange way, I feel like Draw Something is letting me connect with other people on a more basic level—while also connecting with them on a more complex level, which brings me to:

Personalities, Predilections Revealed

When symbols are not hardwired in our brains, diversity in interpretation becomes the challenge, with varying degrees of severity. Symbols have vastly changed over time. Think about the cross, which was once a symbol of a terrifying death, or the Nazi swastika, which once symbolized peace and harmony. With sharing-propelled pop culture, signifiers changes even faster. And that’s part of the fun.

Playing Draw Something with a diverse group of people can make the lowest common denominator of symbol rise to the top. Take the clue “Easter.”  It’s interesting that most of my teammates drew a bunny and eggs. One friend drew the stone rolled away from the tomb. The word “wreck,” as another example, is a free-for-all.

The interpretation a person chooses tells so much about their personality that couldn’t quite be seen any other way. It’s a peek inside the way they interpret words, and moreover, the way they think you interpret words. It’s a melding of the mind, like Stephen King’s “mind-reading trick” in On Writing.

Going the other way, you have to know your audience. For me, a big part of the fun is choosing an interpretation that will hopefully provide a big of amusement for my partner, as well as get a correct guess. And I definitely tend to land on the “obscurer the better” end of the spectrum. I am proud to have friends for whom I could draw something like this and get a correct answer:

For others, it would look a lot more like this:

I recently realized through a number of contextual clues that one of my DS partners was likely British. A brief mental retrospective over our 72-turn streak made me wonder if I would have drawn anything differently if I had realized that earlier. Then again, I probably don’t even know what he might not know. I like to have to second-guess what I may lazily consider universal; it reminds me that the world is a lot bigger than I am.

The Absence of Words

I mentioned above that I have substantial art training, but by trade I am a writer. I read and manipulate words all day long, nearly every day. A forum, no matter how small, where I cannot use any words at all to communicate is like a tiny brain oasis.

Definitely part of the fun for me is eschewing ALL letters and numbers in favor of images and symbols only. It’s the absence of language, which is at once uniting and dividing. Remove language, and you remove a lot of the barriers to communication. In my professional life, I write business proposals and we strive to convey as much information in graphics rather than in words for the very simple reason that graphics are more efficient for communicating certain types of information.

Of course, part of the point of Draw Something is that it’s inefficient. While there are no documented rules, many hardliners pooh-pooh any use of words (or actively call it out). For my part, I never use words, letters, or numbers, but I won’t quit a game with someone just because they do—unless it’s seriously blatant. Because what’s the fun in this?

The second part of the joy I get in the absence of words is that communication is absolutely reduced to the task at hand—at least until the latest update. Previously, your drawing had to speak for itself. And the only praise you got was a correct guess. If you felt really compelled to applaud your partner for a particular mini-masterpiece, you could squiggle out an awkward “Awesome!” with your finger, then trash the drawing and get onto the task. But that was it. It felt elementary—rudimentary and joyful as finger painting. But in the days of the like button, endless streams of comments, and retweeting, I think we’ve all gone a little too far in our hunger for e-validation. Draw Something was a little respite from the constant approval mongering. Which brings me to…

The Joy of Creating in a Vacuum

If I spent a lot of extra time drawing a really special “Lennon” for you, it was because I wanted to do that—for you and for myself. Because it was hopefully a little highlight to both of our days. Sure, I may dash off a quick “bride” before I go to sleep. But in large part, I try to spend some time on my little doodles. There’s no countdown clock, no extra coins for getting done faster. In a world where everything seems reduced to its most streamlined 140 characters, where every task seems multitasked, it’s nice for me to slow down while I’m drawing for you—and for you to slow down while you watch me draw it.

More than that, the drawings used to disappear as soon as they were sent. Sure, you could capture a screenshot (and many have) but that wasn’t really in the spirit of things. For the most part, the “tiny paintings” were a fleeting pleasure, shared between you and your DS partner. I was disappointed that the update not only lets you save your drawings, but has buttons for sharing them on the social network. The small pleasure of creating in a vacuum, just for the sheer joy of doing it, has been reduced like so many other things as a means to get attention.

The changes brought about by the update  didn’t surprise me—especially after the OMGPOP CEO showed his true colors, comparing DS to Information Age behemoths AOL and Facebook. His true motive (not that I blame him) is to sell as many apps as possible to demanding consumers who have had their tastes cultivated for them by the prevailing social media, not to preserve a neat little microcosm of culture—pop and otherwise. 

But I still love the game, and I’ll still play for all the reasons cited above. But I’m keeping it between you and me.

No Such Thing as Bad Publicity?

I stumbled across this gem of an article today. It is a take-off of a feature article about me and my book that ran in my high school newspaper, The Cry of the Hawk. As a friend pointed out, it appears to have been translated into another language, then translated back into English through an automated app, like Google Translate. I wonder if this is a technique employed by spammy sites like Online-Degree-Diploma to drive traffic to themselves, while skirting outright plagiarism?

I don't quite understand. However I am beyond amused. There is indeed some poignant wisdom in this weird translation, sort of like a bad fortune cookie dictum.

Writing a main division is a severe try for some determined author, as well as Zupko’s put confidence in was no different. In Apr 2011 she submitted to thirty agents, athwart twenty of them returned a mean form of rejection. Zupko said, “If a solitary chairman is starting to confirm a predestine of my book, it is starting to be me.” She did have it chance.

In the words of another friend, "When a content farm bot is translating and then untranslating and then republishing your high school newspaper's article about you, you know you've made it."