In the graveyard: Playback Timed Out

When writing I’ll often have Netflix going in the background. I’m currently polishing off the fifth season of The Twilight Zone. But as it happens I get interrupted a lot and when I sit back down I’m greeted by the black screen with the words “Playback Timed Out”. It’s what happens when your show is paused for too long, they cut off streaming to help with server congestion (or so I’ve read). Sometimes that’s how I feel about projects I start.

Bar none; DIY, work or school papers, house repairs, anything really. But in this case I’m relating to writing. See I have this file which I affectionately refer to as “The graveyard”. It isn’t where projects go to die, it’s just where they get buried and forgotten. It’s full of ambitious projects and false starts. Whole books are buried in there, some of which only need a bit of editing to become something. There are half finished short stories and concepts as short as a single poorly jotted down sentence. All buried in the rank and file of a computer grave yard, all because playback timed out.

It’s like anything I start has a timer that begins counting down at the moment of inception, a timer at the end of which attention and excitement begins to wane and the project, once loved, finds itself relegated to that digital graveyard. I tell myself I’ll dig it up again one day, maybe cannibalize its good parts into a new story. However that graveyard is growing faster than it’s shrinking.

I have no idea what the moral of this post it. Maybe we all have something like a graveyard full of ideas that remind us that we’re trying. And maybe we all have an attention playback timer that keeps those reminders filling those graveyards. I wonder if accomplished writers have entire necropolises filled to the brim with ideas that will never be, but keep telling themselves that one day they just might be.

Go make words, and try not to bury too many.

Good advice, Bad advice, TDFW’s advice.

I am dangerously under qualified to give advice, but what the hell, let’s do this anyway.  This may not be advice that will help you succeed but it can definitely give you insight on how to fail. And I hope you do fail. Seriously, don’t be afraid of failure. How else can you learn from your own mistakes if you don’t fail once in a while? Obstacles are not erected to stop us they’re put up to give us something to overcome.

Here are some of the failures I’ve accomplished.

·         Don’t write a youth oriented book with mindless amounts of cursing and drug references

·         Porn’s provide poor ideas for a plot. Also when writing erotica don’t invest too much in plot.

·         Write drunk, edit sober. Don’t write drunk and edit drunk.

·         A peyote trip is a hell of a time to try and hammer out a short story.

·         Don’t get too attached to your characters. It’s better to treat them like Sims from the videogame.  Invest in the important ones as long as they’re interesting. Then put them in the pool and remove the ladder.

·         Books are bricks, not doves.  Your book will not magically soar off into greatness simply because you wrote it. It isn’t unique or special, it’s a brick. Throw it through a publisher’s window with a note that says publish me or you’ll see more bricks.

·         Don’t niche yourself. Write what you love but also learn to love what you write. 

May your failures be heroic, ambitious, impressive, and epic.

Go make words

Friggin blackout kept me from posting. Shout out to Elaina.

Not post today in protest of SOPA / PIPA

Go make words! Unless you’re in congress… you should probably cut back on doing that until you actually have something useful.

Shout out to Sewer Pirate

Immersion: a way out of constant writer’s procrastination:

All write then. Get it? lol. No, seriously. Why does everything become suddenly interesting the moment you decide to sit down and make words happen? Regular procrastination is when someone puts off an assignment because a new video game just came out. But this! THIS! Is writer’s procrastination, when all that needs to get done is to type out one measly page and before I know it the kitchen is cleaner than it’s ever been.

I don’t know how it is for the rest of you, but writer’s procrastination has the annoying result of making me terribly efficient in everything but writing. One minute I’m sitting in front of a cup of coffee slapping my cheeks and telling my keyboard to prepare for the literary assault that I’m about to impose upon it. Next I’m vacuuming for some reason.

I’ve found only one way to combat this effect and that is immersion. Have you ever been overly interested in something simply because it’s part of your life, even though if you think about it rationally for a moment it turns out that the thing in question isn’t that big of a deal? That’s what I’m talking about, filling empty time and surrounding yourself with what you would like to be chiefly relevant at the moment. In this case writing.

I used to play a blatantly unhealthy amount of video games and table top games. I still do but a lot less. My strongest drive to do so came from the people and things that surrounded me. My friends played and if I wanted to be competent I had to put in time to practice or read or whatever it took not to not be the squid or the noob or the level one rouge that died in every frickin’ encounter. Anyway, my point is that the things I became most interested in were the things that I encountered most often.

The most obvious place to start with is with your reading material. Reading sets the bar for yourself as a writer and can help move your thoughts in the proper direction. I usually jot down notes as I write, about character quirks I like or setting descriptions and author styles that I would like learn from. Podcasts are a huge help. I love fiction so having a good fiction podcast on hand to listen to helps a lot. Writing podcasts are a must, even if you don’t like the advice they give. Listening to literary or writing podcast can teach you a ton of new things and can help reinforce the foundation of knowledge you already have.

Friends are a key component to immersion. Having people around you to support and challenge you can make all the difference. I can’t tell you where to find these people but if you do, hold on to them like treasure. Now I am not one of those people. A friend of mine once asked if I could read a short piece he wrote for a fiction class. He was clearly proud and excited about it. I read through the five pages of it and decided that it was boring, crass, had no real plot to it, in short it was terrible. I told him it was “great A+ worthy material” and when he turned it in he got just that, so did everyone else in the class. Eventually he did give up and ended up transferring to a degree in human resources. I wish there was a simple moral to this story but there isn’t. People infect your life whether you want them to or not. I happen to like having people around who doubt me enough to make me want to work to prove them wrong as much I like having someone who will stroke my ego when I doubt myself. But having the completely wrong person around at the wrong time can lead you a stray without you even realizing. You might want to be a playwright but all your friends think you should do sitcoms. Or you may be a terrible writer whom no one has the guts to tell the truth to or worse you may be fantastic but surround by people who don’t support you. But I digress.

The important point here is that you should be willing to make writing at least a noticeable part of your life. If it surrounds you than it can easily keep you on track as a reminder of what you need to be doing in order to get to where you want to be.

Go make words!