Another personal post
So once again I find myself awake at an ungodly hour. This time, however, I’m not – to use a cliche – plagued by insecurity or uncertainty. I mean, there’s still some of it there, but it’s not got me up worrying about whether or not people are talking behind my back or if maybe nobody has ever loved me and ew look at me in the mirror what a fatty plumper. No, this time I’m up thinking about something my therapist and I discussed earlier today (technically yesterday but hey fuck it I measure my days by when I sleep you wanna fight about it?).
In discussing unhealthy trains of thought, and foul moods, and all manner of unbidden unhealthiness, we got on the subject of an old Taoist analogy that I’ve always been a fan of. Life was once explained as being like a cloud moving over an empty field. Where the cloud does not cast its shadow, it will one day cast it, this is just how clouds are. However, it is also true that where the cloud now casts its shadow, one day that shadow will have moved on and light will shine. This is just how clouds are. This is also how life is. Clouds happen. Sometime those clouds are dark and thick and full of fury, other times they’re wispy and thin and hardly noticeable. But they always pass. They move on into the wind, but the field is still there. You are the field, and the cloud is the bad times. Some bad times are worse than others, and some might leave lasting marks (physical or not), but they’re not forever. I think that even when I was at my worst, I was able to draw upon this analogy in order to move forward, if not always with my head held high. I’ve been lauded for my strength in the past, and while I was rarely able to see it (and even now I feel remiss admitting it for reasons of unnecessary humility), I’ve come through some fairly cloudy days. I wonder if I’d have had the same perseverance if I’d not discovered this concept.
After describing the cloud thing to my therapist, he nodded and offered his own extension of the parable. He urged me to think about what clouds are made of. He talked about being in a plane, looking down at the clouds while the sun shined brightly. Clouds are nothing, really – insubstantial. You could walk right through one. This is the true nature of sadness, of insecurity, of doubt and grief and all the nasty emotions we put ourselves through. They’re just a bunch of water vapor blocking out the sun. And the sun is the most important part of all this, because even when those clouds are overhead, even if they’re nasty black thunderheads, the sun is still just on the other side, waiting to see your smiling face again. All the brightness and beauty and, well, life of life is still there, whether or not you can see it.
Bad times, bad moods, bad thought processes, these are all very real – much like clouds are observably real – but you have to remember just what they really are. They’re insubstantial things. Sometimes they try their best to hide the good things in our lives. They’ll thunder and rain and flash like a child having a tantrum until they’ve got our undivided attention if we let them. But there’s something else about clouds that we humans have the very unique capability of doing – we can step out from under them. We can look out into the field where it’ s warm and sunny and leg it over to those greener pastures. Sure, some clouds take longer to walk away from, but no cloud covers the whole sky, and no cloud can devour the sun.
He told me these things, and everything fell into place. There was another weather-based analogy I had been using when I got down, something said by British comedian Stephen Fry, who suffers from bipolar disorder (something I don’t suffer from, but it sounded like good general wisdom at the time). He said, “Moods are like the weather. When it rains, it is real, you get wet It is also true of the weather that one day it will get better.” I’m paraphrasing a bit, but he has a point. But there was a crucial detail that I’d been ignoring – Fry is speaking from the perspective of a man with a mood disorder. Bipolar disorder is such that those who suffer from it have little to no control over their mood, and that sort of psychological chaos can drive a person to some unfortunate and desperate ends. For someone who may be at the end of their rope and just can’t seem to stop it, thinking of moods like the rain, as something that is out of your control but that is also not permanent, is a brilliant approach.
For a “normal” person (as far as brain function goes), this wisdom doesn’t quite go far enough. I had to think about this a lot, to find a way to reconcile the valuable wisdom that existed in the Taoist parable, my therapist’s amendment to that parable, and the words of a man who has seen some shit and come through the other side. This is what had kept me up, and why I decided to make this post, and it was two paragraphs ago when I wrote the bit about walking out from under the clouds that it all really came together for me.
I write a lot about writing here, almost every week for a few months now. I talk about the craft, and about how to improve the craft, but what often gets glossed over is how the craft can improve you. I came here to write this post because I knew that in writing it, I would digest the wisdom I’d been handed, that I would challenge myself to put it together coherently and in terms that were mine. There were a few times that I had to pause and ask myself questions as if I were the reader, questions that needed answers now more than ever. The integrity of the wisdom hung in the balance. I found a resolution to each question, and in doing so had weeded out the doubts and uncertainties that were hiding inside me, and I put them to rest.
Now it’s up to me to remember that clouds ain’t got shit.
Writing Wednesday
It’s important to read as a writer. It teaches you things about writing by showing you things that another writer has done. But that isn’t what this post is about – moreover, it’s about something I just learned through reading another writer’s work. It’s one of those lessons that you look at and say “I totally knew that, but I hadn’t truly DIGESTED that information until just now.”
When you’re writing, there’s a lot of desire to surprise your reader. It’s tough, especially if your reader is A “reader” (as in someone who reads), and really the best you can hope for is an unexpected, but knowing sigh or groan – that sort of “that poor bastard” sigh that comes when life throws someone a curveball right in front of your face.
The problem is, in trying to achieve this goal of “the perfect twist”, many writers end up writing things that are unrealistic at best and flat-out impossible at worst. Situations that are just entirely too coincidental, and that have no basis in the reality they’ve set up and little to no foreshadowing. This is what I like the call the PEEKABOO approach. You’re literally pulling an event out of thin air, and using it to get a reaction out of your reader. The problem is that it’s a cheap reaction. You’re literally getting a baby to laugh. DO YOU KNOW HOW EASY IT IS TO GET A BABY TO LAUGH? BABIES HAVE FOUR MODES: CRYING, SLEEPING, LAUGHING, AND STANDBY (drooling quietly). Yeah, baby laughter is cute, but that baby ain’t gonna remember that time you made that face. That baby doesn’t remember it’s own NAME.
The things that a reader will remember are the things they can relate to. Even when reading genre fiction, high fantasy or biopunk or what-the-fuck-have-you, they’ll remember the things that life throws at everybody. THOSE are the twists you should strive for. And don’t pull them out of thin air, no matter how small. Does your main character need to get away from somewhere, but he doesn’t have his car keys? Have him put those keys somewhere that isn’t his pocket, or in a pocket in a jacket he left behind in a hurry. Your reader should be given the CHANCE to see these things coming, because when they DON’T they can think back and go “oh god that’s right he left his keys at the factory” or some shit, and they’ll remember that time they left their keys at work or dropped their phone in the toilet and just go “uuuuuugh this poor bastard”.
This all ties into the fact that your characters aren’t just game pieces moving from point a to point b in your grand plot. They’re people, living life. Life should happen to them, outside of your plot. It complicates things, just like it does to us, and that will make your work that much more memorable.
Writing Wednesday
Last night, I was working on my novel when something happened that I hadn’t planned or expected. I sat there, reading and rereading what I’d just written, trying to figure out just what the fuck had just happened. I was probably more confused that the main character was about the situation. I’ve written things differently than planned in the past, but nothing has ever come out of left field like this has.
In the end, I decided to just go with it.
And that’s what I want you to do, too. Just go with it. If you surprise yourself, don’t go and change it because it doesn’t hold to your outline, however detailed it may be. The creative process is both creative and a process, and as a result is prone to growing and changing in its own unique ways. Holding it to some preordained notion of what’s “supposed” to happen is only going to make your work boring, both for you and the reader. You’re not writing a technical manual.
See, writing doesn’t just come from the brain. It comes from what’s around you, who’s around you, and what’s going on in your life. Your values will inevitably come through at some point while you write, be it in a side character or the central plot. You might even make cheeky hidden references to thinks you like, Easter eggs for any reader who likes the same things. You might not even notice you’ve DONE it until you’re reading over your first draft, or even after it’s been published. But it’ll happen.
Sometimes it will happen more directly than that, though. You’ll have a bad month at your day job, or you’ll be having some back problems, and suddenly your main character’s boss is kind of cranky or he suffers a back injury.
What specifically happened to me? A character I hadn’t intended on being in more than a scene or two literally trapped the main character into a quite uncharacteristic date for coffee. This side character has literally invited herself into the book on a greater scale than she was intended for, and she brought a potential romance subplot with her. I won’t say she’s an unwanted house guest, but she IS an unexpected one. Thankfully, she’s a real hoot to write, and I think the main character needs this kind of thing to happen. He needs a bit more humanity, and this just might be one way to do it.
And if I really can’t stand her or what she brings to the story? I’ll just fucking kill her.
Minis Monday
So it’s time for another Minis Monday. This segment is the one I post the least often, mostly because I get a lot of my miniatures discussion out over at the Fearless Games channel. However, now and again I decide that I wanna write it down, so that’s a-what I’m doing.
Remember, if you came here from the Fearless Games Facebook page, THIS BLOG IS MY PERSONAL BLOG. ANYTHING I SAY HERE IS SOLELY ME, AND DOES NOT REFLECT THE OPINIONS OR BEHAVIOR OF THE FEARLESS GAMES GROUP. I OFTEN CENSOR MY LANGUAGE FOR FEARLESS GAMES, BUT HERE I DON’T. IF YOU DON’T LIKE THAT, THEN PLEASE DON’T READ ON.
Now that we have that shit out of the way, I wanted to discuss the importance of basing you damn models. Now I’m not gonna lie – up until recently, I never saw the point and frankly didn’t give a shit about basing. It felt like a lot of extra work just for the sake of cosmetics, and that didn’t mesh with me at the time.
It didn’t mesh because I was lazy and my ADD wasn’t being treated and I thought I’d do a bad job because I thought I was bad at everything. SEE SOME OF THIS BLOG’S EARLY POSTS FOR SOME OF THAT INSECURE BULLSHIT.
I recently based my first squad of minis, specifically my Sanguinary Guard for the Blood Angels army I’m making for the Legends of War thing we’re doing at Fearless Games. I used some Fine Basing Grit by a company called Hobby Round, I think. It’s basically fat sand. Anyway, I’m not going to get into the how-to, because that’s something you can find EASILY. Might do a video on it for Fearless Games, dunno yet. AAAANYWAY, the point is that when I was done, the minis went from being cool-looking miniatures, to a finished fucking product. It hadn’t been NECESSARY, but it brought that extra bit of flair to the models that hadn’t been there.
And I didn’t do anything fancy. I’m serious. They’re dirt based. My miniatures look like they’re standing on dirt. No water, no grass, no rocks, just some fuckin DIRT. And it looks REALLY DAMN GOOD. And it was then that I realized that while basing isn’t NECESSARY, it’s very damn important. Would you hang a really nice painting on your wall without a frame? Sure, you could, but it just wouldn’t look as nice. It’d look like you half-assed it, or like you’re in a thrown-together apartment. Throw even a cheap, simple frame around that shit and suddenly you’re in the fuckin GUGGENHEIM, man.
Seriously. Sometimes that extra mile is really important to making your minis shine. And it doesn’t take long. Hell, you can make it look like you based your minis by PAINTING FUCKING STREET LINES ON THE ALREADY BLACK BASES. Literally just paint some lines. Yeah, that doesn’t work in ALL terrains, but that doesn’t matter. The basing is more about having a finished product than a versatile all-terrain look. It’s the same for my dirt bases. They’ll look silly in ice terrain or urban terrain, but my opponent will appreciate that I’ve gone that extra mile to add a LITTLE immersion, even if that immersion isn’t constant.
Just some food for thought.
Writing Wednesday
Something I’ve been trying to do with my current novel is consider the names of important characters very carefully. I have certain themes and concepts going that can be really screwed up by the wrong name. Names, incidentally, are of great importance in life, and that goes no different for fiction.
Even if you aren’t running the kind of themes I am on names, the wrong name can really ruin a character. Imagine if Harry Potter had been named something else – something like Barry Kotchner. See how wrong that feels? One of the things that works about Harry’s name is that it’s simple, an everyman name. Unassuming and bland, much like Harry himself is on the surface.
See, this is one of those things that Shakespeare was wrong on. “What’s in a name?” Everything. That’s why names have MEANINGS. It’s why you’re taking a real risk if you name your daughter Chastity, and why most parents don’t name their kid Thor. I’m more inclined to agree with Arthur Miller. “Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life.” Think about how important your name is to you. When someone gets it wrong, you correct them. When someone signs your name and they AREN’T you, they face some serious legal trouble. Your name goes on everything. Your name might not be WHO you are, but it is absolutely one of the things people remember you by – people even say things like “you look (or don’t look) like a [insert name here]”. Think of the person you love the most. Then just think of their first name. Do the same for the person you most despise. Their names alone illicit a response.
Ted. Ron. Greg. Michael. Robin. Alice. Debbie.
Some of you just had emotional reactions. Subtle, maybe, but they were there. You smiled when I mentioned your name, or your spouse’s name, or you wrinkled your nose at your boss’s name.
If so much consideration goes into names in real life, then no less should go into the names that exist in your fiction. Your characters, presumably, have parents who would likely have sat down and discussed what to name their precious child. They had lists. They probably argued over it. They looked up the meanings of the names they liked, and took that into consideration. So should you. If Peter Parker’s parents had named him Tim, it just…wouldn’t be the same.
Writing Wednesday
It can be pretty tempting to avoid common phrases and word choices in the name of originality. To avoid cliche, you might sometimes feel like you have to distance yourself from everything that’s already been done, to do entirely new things and pioneer new vistas of literature and prose.
Don’t.
I’m not saying don’t try new things. I’m not saying don’t try to tell a story nobody’s heard. I’m saying don’t try to do it with words nobody has ever used before. If you want to talk about a faint memory, talk about a faint memory. Don’t try to come up with a brand new way of saying it, because there’s a reason the old way caught on: it’s accurate and it’s graceful and people understand it. When you call a faint memory and blurry recollection, your editor groans and dies a little inside, because he knows that he either has to let it slide for the sake of your ‘originality’, or change it for the sake of the reader. Readers like words, it’s true, but they also like things clean and concise. It’s why Hemingway is such a big deal.
And not only are you potentially alienating your readers and giving your editor a headache, you’re not actually being that original. Even if you call a rose by another name, you’re still talking about fucking roses. Talking about the blurry recollection of a bygone age in which I was less wise but more cavalier doesn’t make you any more original than talking about the faint memory of your naive and reckless youth. See which one just flows better? Flow is important.
If you’re writing for yourself, then go for it, sure. If you’re writing for yourself and your two best friends and nobody else, then fuck it, why not. If you’re writing to be published and make a living, then you need to consider your reader. Consider the times you live in, regardless of the setting of your novel. What can you do to preserve the feel and the veracity of your setting and characters while avoiding the trap of murky, twisting phrases and poor syntax?
We’re all guilty of this at some point or another. Even Hemingway probably had a few blurry recollections in his work, which he likely revised out (or maybe his editor caught them). That’s why we revise, and why we have editors. No writer is perfect, no writer has pumped out the perfect novel/poem/story/biography in the first go with no mistakes. That’s part of why we have editors, but it’s also why we must strive to be objective when observing our own work. Being open to your editor’s suggestions, as I mentioned in a previous post, in crucial, but also you should try and develop your own editorial eye. When you revise, you should open that eye up and pretend the manuscript was written by someone else. Read it like you’ve never read it before, and make the changes that need to be made. Do this twice. Three times if you need to. Tighten your manuscript up even if it means murdering your own favorite sentences, even if it means compromising your blurry recollections into faint memories, because not only will your work be better for it, but you’ll have an easier time SELLING it. Publishers are a cowardly and superstitious lot, and rarely like to take chances. The more familiar ground you can give them in your linguistics, the more they’ll be willing to accept your bold new strokes in theme and plot and characterization.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fucking fix it.
Writing Wednesday
Weeks go by pretty damn quickly, and I find myself grasping for straws on what to post for each week’s Writing Wednesday. Keeping things fresh can be difficult, and that goes for prose, poetry, non fiction, and blogging all alike.
One of the best ways to stay fresh, however, is to keep practicing. This is actually somewhat of an extension of my post about writing for yourself versus writing for others, but what I’m discussing here is the idea of the writing exercise. You’re not doing it to add to your novel, or to your anthology, or your biography, or whatever project you’ve got going because presumably, if you’re in the boat I’m in right in this moment, you’re having trouble keeping it snappy, keeping it interesting, keeping it Zest-fully clean.
Any of you that have had any formal education in writing (taking a class to fill out some credits in college counts) are probably familiar with what I mean. Most teachers will assign a series of short assignments in the beginning of a semester, assignments that are essentially little writing prompts, but with limitations. Write about a gun without using the words gun, firearm, or even WEAPON. Oh, and you’ve got 500 words. Write about your favorite food, or smell, or song, but from the perspective of someone who hates it.
These sort of exercises are important because they force you to think outside of your own head. You have to not just step out of the box, but step out of yourself, out of a world where you can just say ‘gun’ and everyone knows what the fuck you’re talking about, out of your own world where you don’t understand how someone could hate pizza without being a filthy communist pig. You need to consider a thing, or a concept, for what it is as a whole. You need to consider how it works, what it’s made of, where it comes from. You have to come at it from every angle, and then a lot of the time compress that down to fit within a certain word limit. You’re not only testing how well you can analyze something, you’re testing how well you can summarize that analysis to it’s very essentials. It’s about being broad and succinct all in the same exercise and sometimes these things can be fucking brutal.
Other exercises include prompts to write a story that includes a really obscure word, like ‘abaft’ or ‘doppio’, somewhere in the text. Sometimes that word needs to be important to the story, sometimes not. Either way, finding a place to put that word can be difficult without feeling like it’s been shoehorned in. Sometimes that one word will change the entire setting or who the characters are. Sometimes it will determine the presence of a side character or a piece of dialogue.
The point of these exercises is the same as any other exercise. You need to keep your craft well-trained in order to use it properly. If you’re having trouble lifting something, you spend a little more time on the bench press until you no longer have a problem. If you can’t figure out the best way to phrase a sentence, there’s no shame in spending a little time on the side working out your craft.
One thing I used to do (and should probably start doing again) is exercise my writing in text messages. I would send one friend or another as complete a story or description of an object (without using any words related to that object) as I could in a single text message. It was a fun challenge, and my friends’ reactions were usually pretty funny. A few of these, and I was usually ready to tackle my REAL project, with a renewed vigor and thirst for getting it done. Give it a try sometime.
What’s this? Two posts in one day?
Hey guys. I haven’t give those of you who read this thing an update on my personal life in weeks, so I figure now’s as good a time as any.
I had my 28th birthday this past weekend, and I gotta say it was the best yet. A week or two beforehand I was starting to worry about it. I worried that it would be shitty, that it wouldn’t go the way I wanted it to, that nobody really wanted to spend my birthday with me because fuck me that’s why. Thankfully, I was able to sublimate all of that nonsense in time for the day itself, and I had a really wonderful time. Dinner with my girlfriend followed by a great time just dickin’ around with friends at my house was exactly what I needed, and while some people might wonder why I didn’t do something more grandiose, the people who know me understand that as much as I love things like Six Flags and big fun day trips, for my birthday I’m content just to have the company of people who think I’m cool.
I’ve been in therapy about a month or so now, and a couple of weeks were rocky there, and I’m sure further weeks were rocky, but I can already tell that I’m getting better. I’m far from perfect, and I doubt I’ll ever -be- perfect, but I’m slowly becoming ME again, and I’m confident that I will one day be me. I may need to be in therapy for the rest of my days, I may not, but it’s a price I’d be willing to pay to keep the things that I have, as well as gain so much more.
I think the reason I’m posting this is because a friend of mine on Facebook posted a status about how she doesn’t want people to celebrate or mention her birthday. Having been there, I posted the following:
“There were some years that I felt this way, and to an extent I do still feel this way. I’m 28 now, and I don’t have more than a couple hundred bucks in the bank, I’m unemployed and living with my parents, slowly eating myself into an early grave. I’m the son they wished they hadn’t raised, or at least that’s what my mind tells me.
But then, if I’m such a failure of a human being, why do they keep me around? Why do my friends return my calls? Why am I with a girl who’s so clearly too damn good for me?
It doesn’t suit to focus on things yet undone, just as much as it’s bad to live in the past of things you cannot change. The fact of the matter is that you’re not a machine, and so you cannot be held to one universal standard of performance. Some of us take a little longer to get off the runway than others, and that’s perfectly okay because that’s just how people are.
I’m actually kind of taken aback by this status because even though you and I don’t know each other too well – we met maybe once or twice and a Hofstra Writer’s Club meeting – I have to admit that I kind of admire you. You’ve got a certain intensity about you, and you’re incredible talented. I actually had a bit of a crush on you for a while, if I’m being completely honest.
So what I’m getting at is that you might not be satisfied with where you’re at, but that’s no reason not to celebrate being there. Hell, if you don’t want to celebrate your birthday itself, then celebrate the things you DO like about your life – your friends, your family, whatever it is that keeps you going and makes each day worth living. Because even though YOU don’t think you’re worth celebrating, the people who love you absolutely disagree.”
I’m not going to share her name, or exactly what she posted, but sharing my response is my own call so please none of the OMG FACEBOOK NEEDS TO BE PRIVATE silliness that comes from mentioning social networking on any level.
A month ago I wouldn’t have posted anything. Two weeks ago I might not have posted anything more than “chin up, kiddo”. Today, I decided that I couldn’t stand by and just let something like that slide – not when I might be able to help. I barely know this person, but I know the pain she’s going through. I know what it’s like to feel worthless. And I know what it’s like trying to FIGHT that feeling. It’s hard to do, and near impossible to do alone. I don’t mean alone in the romantic sense, either. It might have taken nearly losing the woman I love to get my to finally make this journey, but I don’t need her specifically to do it. I DO need my doctor and my friends though. I need PEOPLE. We all do, really. I’m glad as hell that I DO have my girlfriend with me on this, I thank my luckiest fucking stars, but I finally know that I don’t need her to be happy. I don’t need her to live. I was here before her, and as much as I want for us to work out and maybe even one day wear rings for one another, I will be here after her if it doesn’t go as well as I’d like.
I used to focus too hard on being with someone romantically. It used to be my validation. I still fight with that part of my psyche sometimes, finding myself thinking that she’s my entire world, that everything would suck without her. But those thoughts are more easily chased away now, and I know that one day I won’t even have them, because I know where they come from now. I know that these thoughts aren’t mine – not really, at least. They come from an outside source, one that I took too seriously and misinterpreted. They live in a part of me that is weak and wounded and has been avoiding the healing process because it’s just too hard. Relying on other people is easy, and if you chase people away? There’s about 6 billion more out there to rely on, to take advantage of. I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to lift people up, in the same way they’ve lifted me up all my life. I want to stand on my own as often as I can. I know there will be times that I need to lean on someone. I want to save the leaning for those times.
It’s going to be a long, hard journey, and I’m going to hate a lot of it. But it’s going to be worth it, as it already has been.
I probably won’t post this one to Facebook or anything. People check my blog now and again I’m sure, and these posts aren’t necessarily for public consumption. Maybe I’ll show the link to a few people here and there, who knows. What I do know is that I need to be writing other things right now, so for the nonce, I’m out.
Writing Wednesday
So I just finished editing another novel for Hydra Publications. Once it gets released, I’ll put some links here for people to take a look, maybe buy it, whatever. It was real damn good, I actually think people would like it.
Anyway, the reason I mention my completed project is because there was something about this novel in particular that you don’t always see in fiction, and something that a lot of writers have trouble with. That ‘thing’ is being true to your characters. Now, I don’t mean not cheating on them, or not lying to them – treat them like shit if you gotta – but rather being true to what they are. If you’re writing a novel, and the main character is a thirty-year-old Jewish investment banker, even if that investment banker discovers that he’s the goddamn Batman, you need to remember that he has roots. He comes from a certain background, and has become a certain person. Discovering superpowers does not change who you are. It may change how much of yourself you SHOW people, but that’s something I’m going to get to in a moment.
We’re all formed by our experiences. I’m not going to get psychological on you all, here, because it’s not a field I’m an expert at. There are studies out there that theorize exactly WHEN our core personalities are formed, but they all seem to agree that it’s fairly early in life. And the more I think about it, the more I tend to agree with that concept. I’m about to turn 28 years old, and I’m a self-sacrificing, self-doubting, caring, nurturing, violently angry bastard of a man. And I was a self-sacrificing, self-doubting, caring, nurturing, violently angry bastard of a kid. The first time I punched a dude over literally nothing was in…preschool. We were all playing house and I was dead-set on playing the role of “Daddy”, but this motherfucker insisted that HE would be “Daddy” and that…that just wasn’t gonna fly.
BUT THATS A STORY FOR ANOTHER DAY
My point is that characters, when written properly, are people. People behave in certain ways at certain points in their lives, pretty much across the board. Children are curious and adventurous, but startle easy like Tusken Raiders and Goblins. Teenagers are reckless and horny and moody, and constantly misunderstand each other like all the characters in Kamen Rider 555 (Faiz, for you uninitiated folk). Adults are like teenagers, but they hide it better. Regardless of all these human similarities, everyone is different in their own unique ways. I’m all the things I listed before, but my best friend is nothing like me. He’s an inspiring, escapist, brilliant, overly logical prick, and we get along swimmingly because we can see past the differences to what things we DO share.
Now here’s where I’m getting to the part I promised two paragraphs ago. Some people hide who they are. They wear a mask of sorts, to be cliche about it, to make people believe that they’re someone they aren’t. I did this in college to an extent, and everyone does this a little bit every day. It’s dangerous to wear your heart on your sleeve. Some people take that to a much greater extent, and you don’t get to see who they really are until they trust you enough to let that mask crack a bit behind closed doors. The point is, this is an entirely viable way to write a character, especially if you want to liberate them from their false nature over the course of your story, but if you want this facade to be a major part of the plot or that character’s development, the reader needs to be aware of it before you pull the mask aside.
It’s easy to have mild-mannered Clark Kent suddenly start beating in heads after discovering his alien superpowers, and then answer the quite-understandable questions of “wait what the hell” with “he was always like that, he just hid it from the world”. But as a writer, what’s easy is very rarely what’s right. If Clark’s got a mean streak in him, you need to hint at it, to give the reader just a little taste, because when you finally open those floodgates, the attentive reader will have been on the edge of their seat waiting for it, and the inattentive reader can be pointed to all the times you dropped those hints when they ask you “what the hell”. A really good example of this is in Wanted – the comic book version, not the movie version. The main character is painted to be such a pansy-ass, but even from the beginning, he expressed a certain feeling of discontent. He didn’t feel like himself, didn’t love his life as it was. This was enough to make the absolute 180 degree personality shift he goes through justifiable – there was always a little bit of asshole in there that he just didn’t want to let out.
Sometimes this kind of thing is done through self-discovery, especially with younger characters. A character will find, through the course of the story, that there’s an aspect of their personality that they’d never expressed, or never acknowledged, but was there from the start in small ways. A character that discovers her boldness might make a small stand in the first chapter, only to be making a grand stand on the battlements in the last chapter and realizing “oh hey, I’m kind of a badass”. On the flip side, a character who discovers his cruelty probably starts with a sharp tongue in the first chapter, only to find himself with a sharp knife in the last.
Veracity is key in writing. Even when trying to mislead your reader and your characters, it all needs to come together in the end and make sense. If you ignore the nature of your characters, of your world, and are untrue to them, then veracity is lost and you’re just moving chess pieces through a series of events you thought was cool. It becomes your own personal power fantasy, where you mold every moment to suit what makes you happiest. That makes for a good time, sure, but it doesn’t make for a good story. Writing isn’t all about you, though. Not really.
Writing Wednesday
If you’re a writer, and you’re like me, you have an absolute treasure trove of ideas swimming around up in that melon of yours, all just waiting to be vomited up onto the page. Fiction ideas, nonfiction ideas, nonfiction-fiction fusion ideas, experimental literature ideas, hell even ideas for things that aren’t writing like films, music, paintings, anything!
When it comes to generating ideas, I’m pretty much always on. Right now I have three novel ideas in various states of completion, with three more sitting on the drawing board, as well as two comic book projects, both waiting for me to give them some attention. I’ve got ideas for films – long AND short – as well as musical projects (Keep an eye out for Rockelele, coming to your ears GOD KNOWS WHEN LOL). I draw sometimes, I paint sometimes, and I constantly have ideas for both.
If you’re NOT like me, you’re probably getting jealous. Some people have trouble with ideas, so when they meet an idea guy, as it were, they get all torches-and-pitchforks. Well, fuck you I say, because sometimes having so many ideas blows every single dick on the block and some from the next block over. Especially if you ALSO have ADD (or ADHD), then you’re just this whirlwind of cool ideas and zero productivity.
And that’s just the problem with having so many ideas – there is a such thing as TOO MANY ideas. I think most writers have at least a little ADD, in that we get excited for cool new ideas and cool new projects. You’re working on that novel, that story, that article, or whatever, and suddenly INSPIRATION FUCKING HITS and now you really want to give this new idea some more attention because it’s the cool new shiny toy and it’s just so much more alluring than the CURRENT project because the current project is at the “hard part” stage of actually fucking writing it.
That’s when you need to sit down and figure out which one is a better idea. Not just by quality of premise, but by compatibility with you as a writer, as well as compatibility with your wallet. When I say compatibility with you as a writer, I mean that every writer has their limitations, every writer has their style and process and voice, and just like in the music industry not every voice is fit to sing every song. You don’t give O Fortuna to Cher in the same way that you don’t give Gangnam Style to a choir boy (you also don’t give Gangnam Style to HYUNA – she’s cute, but she really just shits all over it). If you write like Warren Ellis, you’re probably not going to have the best time working on that sappy romance novel, and if you write like Danielle Steele it might be best to take a step back from that gritty noir detective piece.
This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t push your limits. It’s always good to try new things, don’t get me wrong, but save the experimental ideas for when you don’t have other things on your plate. Because if it doesn’t work out, or you end up hating it, then your wallet might end up a little bit light. And by that I mean if you’re trying to make a living writing, you absolutely have to consider which ideas might net you the most beneficial returns within the timeframe you need them to. Tooling out that new genre piece you’ve never tried before might be the best thing that ever happened to your craft, but you have to be able to eat while you do it.
It comes down to a combination of impulse control and self-awareness. As a writer, you need to take the time to sit down with every idea as it comes, assess it, and either jot it down for later or get started on it based on how viable it may or may not be. Sometimes an idea shouts at you to get it done. It won’t let you sleep, it won’t let you work. But if that idea is no good for you, it’s not worth buckling to the pressure just because the better ideas are being more polite.
Model Monday
So it’s been a few weeks since I’ve done a Model Monday post, and that’s mostly because my camera isn’t so hot (or I don’t know what I’m doing) and I don’t have a proper lightbox, so getting pictures of my work up makes it difficult to make these posts with an real relevance. I could tell you all about my technique or my progress, but it wouldn’t really matter because ultimately, painting is a visual medium.
So instead of talking about my progress or my technique, I guess I’ll talk about something that doesn’t require visual aids.
Right now I got nothin. I dunno…make sure you thin your paints, homie. Keep your brushes in good condition. Scrape off them mold lines.
As an update, painting alabaster is a real bitch but it looks soooo goooooooood on my Sanguinary Guard. I’m happier with them than I am with Dante, who you can see some less than flattering photos of over at the Fearless Games Facebook.
Writing Wednesday
Welcome to another Writing Wednesday, this time with the name actually fucking correct.
I want to talk to you guys about a part of writing that doesn’t come until AFTER the work is done. The book is written, the contract is signed, and you’re on your way to being published. Some of you reading this, if not all of you, are probably saying “what the fuck does he know about that shit, he hasn’t been published yet”, and to that I remind you that I was a publishing major for a time, and I understand the publishing process pretty well. I’ve done some editorial work, so I have SOME idea what goes on, and it’s that editorial work I want to discuss with you today.
The editorial process is kind of scary for an author – you’re giving your baby to someone you probably don’t even know, for review, critique, and possibly even CHANGE. Thing of it is, that editor is gonna be that baby’s godparent. That editor has a responsibility to you and your baby to make sure it comes out to be the best it can be. Sometimes you just gotta trust in them to do the right thing.
Some editors, like myself, will keep closely in touch with you during the process, asking your opinion on things that they want to change or don’t quite get. Other editors will just make a bunch of changes with some notes and send it back to you for one lump review. Regardless, there are two things that I’m asking you to do when it comes time: One, trust that your editor isn’t trying to take away your voice, but instead is trying to amplify it. An oversensitive author is NO FUN to deal with, and being oversensitive can engender resentment in the end. If your editor wants to know where you were going with x paragraph in y chapter, or wants you to consider changing a phrase, try to remember that the editor is there for a very important reason – to give you a third party, objective view on your work before it goes to print. Your editor is your first reader, so treat them like you’d want to be treated by your favorite author. Two, if your editor needs something from you, don’t dilly-dally. Life happens, everyone gets that, but if the process is delayed because the editor is waiting on you for something revised, it gums up the whole works and will delay your release and make you look flat-out unprofessional. This is, after all, a business, and once you’ve signed a contract you need to treat that book like a second job. You’re not the only one making money on this thing, and sometimes your editor doesn’t get paid until AFTER the book releases, so delaying your revisions (or anything else your editor needs from you) could quite literally be reducing your editor’s paycheck by the minute. Your editor is working hard to get the edits done in a timely manner, don’t you owe him or her the same courtesy?
I try to be open with the authors I edit for – constant communication, questions about things I don’t get, suggestions for revisions if I think they’re needed. I’m friends with them on Facebook. I do this to try and build the trust needed for the first thing, and the desire to help me out for the second thing. I’m a writer myself, I get how it is. I sometimes have trouble giving stories to people I KNOW for critique. But this is our craft, and a craft is a business at the end of the day. Professionalism is important in any craft, no matter what it is, because if you behave like an amateur, you’re going to get treated like one. Nobody wants to work with an amateur.
This isn’t to say that editors are gods. They’re human beings with flaws, and some of them are really shit at their jobs – that’s why I’m not just telling you to let them do their jobs and not even review what they did to your manuscript. Some babysitters just leave the kid to their own devices, and a lot of the time that ends up getting the kid hurt. Some editors try to do too much, or too little, so by all means ask to see their edits at the end of the day. But even those poor editors are spending their time on your manuscript, so at least treat them with some respect and get back to them when they ask for revisions, and don’t jump at them when they suggest a change.
DISCLAIMER: If anyone I’ve edited for or am editing for is reading this, I’m not talking about anyone specific here. Just a general public service announcement. If you’re REALLY worried, email me and I’ll remind you how cool you are 🙂
Model Monday
Since today is Monday, I’m going to start with a series I’m calling Model Monday. What I’ll be doing with Model Monday is discussing tabletop wargaming in one way or another – sometimes I’ll discuss Warhammer 40,000, sometimes I’ll discuss other games, we’ll see where it all goes.
Today I want to discuss the joy of painting. Right now I’m working on the Blood Angels Commander Dante figure (in Finecast, oh la la) for a series with Fearless Games (and on Facebook) called Legends of War. If you’re curious what exactly Legends of War is, you can take a look at the video explaining it because that’s not what I’m talking about here today (and we can use the views, likes, comments, etc – GIVE US LOVE). The reason I’m specifically talking about Dante is because what I wanted to do for this model has caused me to completely forget reevaluate the way I was painting my models.
Before coming up with the grand plan to paint Dante in Non Metallic Metal gold (what was I thinking), I didn’t put a lot of thought or effort into painting my models. I didn’t thin my paints much if at all, I didn’t clean the models up, I didn’t shade or wash or highlight – closest I got to highlighting was the occasional drybrush – and ultimately, while my models looked fine for tabletop play, they didn’t look all that great. About a year ago I stripped the paint off of all of my Black Templars HQ choices with intentions of repainting them, and until very recently they remained unpainted. Redoing it felt daunting when I didn’t have a plan.
But then came Legends of War, and a deadline, and Dante. I knew I needed to start clean, and part of that was going back and trying out a few new techniques. Thinning paints, washing, color blending, all of that good stuff needed to be tested and tried before I tackled the hard part. So, I finally repainted one of my BT models – specifically, a Chaplain on a Bike. Easily one of my favorites. I wish I had before photos, because posting AFTER photos is kinda pointless without them, but needless to say Ambrose looks great now and I’m super happy with it. I liked it so much (and was still sort of wary about starting the real project) that I decided to tackle a new model. I converted a space marine biker (and a piece of a Fantasy knight) into a secondary model to count as a Bike Chaplain for fluff reasons in my BT army that I’ll probably do another post on at a later date. This model came out incredibly. It was time to move on to Dante.
The NMM Gold process has been somewhat touch-and-go, but it’s doing well. But something I’ve noticed now is that painting feels completely different to me now. Before, it was kind of a chore. I mean I enjoyed it, but ultimately it was something that I needed to do before I could play the game and half the time I just wanted to get it over with. Now while I’m painting, I put a minecraft video (Yogscast usually) or an ASMR video (THATS a topic I’ll talk about another time) and just get completely hypnotic about it. It’s not necessarily RELAXING, mostly because my back cramps up sometimes, but it feels sort of like how writing does. It’s exciting. I love to watch as the model comes to life in my hands now, as little ‘happy accidents’ reveal things that I didn’t even expect would look great.
I think this is the sort of thing that can be applied to anything, hobby or not, painting or not. If you have the wrong attitude about something, don’t take the time to learn to do it PROPERLY, and don’t think about what you’re doing, you won’t love doing it and you won’t like the results. Once you take a step back, consider the idea that you were wrong at first and this ‘optional’ thing is less optional than you thought, and revise your approach, you might end up finding value in it that wasn’t there before. I can’t wait to paint now, and thank god because I need to finish Dante by the 23rd and there’s still SO MUCH TO DO.
I’ll try and take some photos of the models I mentioned at some point today so I can upload them, but if not I’ll be making another post next week, likely with photos of Dante complete so I’ll upload the bikers then too. After Dante is finished, the next step of Legends of War is a squad of Sanguinary Guard. I have one SG painted up, but I’m gonna strip him and start over I think. Make sure the whole army is on the same level.
Coming up Cypress 