Some Writing Goals for 2014

I have set some writing goals for the next 365 days. Here they are:

To write down details without having to pause for 10 minutes every paragraph to figure it out.

This really kills momentum. When I try to plow through the story without the details, I find myself wandering so far off course that I lose what made me excited about the work.

Increase my writing endurance/focus/attention span to an hour.

Dude, writing is tiring, yo.

Learn to use smaller words more frequently. Let's say, 80% per piece.

I tend to lean on 10-dollar words. I blame the fact that I'm an immigrant.


I tried to be as specific as possible. By having measurable goals, it makes it easier for me to come up with tasks and routines to achieve them. Even now, I can see that I need to do some pre-writing to help with the first goal. Does that mean I outline? Freewrite? Think about the topic more prior to the first draft? I have clear options at least.

Also, being specific about my goals helps me to keep track of any progress. Because if I can't keep track of progress then I'll lose interest very quickly. I need to keep myself excited about the process, and the only way that I can think of doing that is to show myself that my effort isn't in vain.

Anyway, hope this works out.

Reboot Post (a.k.a. Hobbies Are Nice)

I've let this blog go way dormant and for the same reason as before - I'm way too hard on myself when it comes to my writing skill and the topics I want to tackle. So, I'm trying this again. And I'll try to go easy on myself.

What motivated me to start writing was something not writing related. I started to teach myself guitar for the first time in 14 years and so far it's going well. When I first tried to learn guitar, I had approached it like I had done with other instruments back at my high school band class. I picked up books and tried to learn the technical stuff, like scales and reading sheet music. I'd play the scales over and over while I tried to memorize their note positions in the sheet music. I made sure that I got the first note patterns down before I moved on to the next. I needed to make sure that I was getting those scales down correctly.

People who are self-taught can already see the problem here: I wasn't really playing anything. The end goal was technical mastery, but I wouldn't have learned a single song by the end of this approach. I had set up a regimen that wasn't any fun and wouldn't even result in something tangible that I could enjoy. This was ok in a class setting, where you had other people to talk to and work with, but it was a boring routine to try when you're by yourself.

Thinking about this now, it's a small wonder why I hung on to that system for about a year. Why did it took me so long to quit?

My approach this time is different. When I started again a few months ago, I insisted to myself that I learn a song - any song. Hell, I made it real easy for myself by typing out "easy acoustic guitar songs for beginners" on Google (yes, even Bing) and I came across a whole lot of tutorial videos and tablatures for music that is not only attainable to play at my level, but fun too. I was even pleasantly surprised to have found a couple of songs that I knew and loved growing up (post-grunge era alt-rock & new wave 80's... yeah!). Then I tried to play, knowing full well that I'm going to sound like crap. However, I made sure to note any improvements in my playing, no matter how small. It was important for me to see that my hours of practice were not in vain.

So far, I can sort of sing and play a passable version of "Mad World" (a rendition of Gary Joules' cover of the Tears for Fears song, aka "the Donny Darko song") and play and butcher the lyrics to "Wonderwall," by Oasis. I'm also working on "Blackbird," by the Beatles because, why not?

Working on "Blackbird" has been the most fun so far. I can kind of play all the riffs to the song now, and even sing it... kind of. I remember how hard I struggled with just the first three chord changes. Seeing how far I've come since then applies a level of significance that can fuel my motivation. Sure, playing the song is still like driving in stop and go traffic at the moment, with a lot of pauses between riffs to re-position my wayward fingers, but I hope to smooth it out with a lot of practice. I'm just happy that the practice has been a lot of fun.

As I started to improve my skills at guitar, my mind turned toward writing. I know I stop short of typing out a single word because I feel like my ideas aren't any good. If I do come across a good idea, I stop short of writing it down because I'm afraid that I'll muck it up in the execution. What's worse is that I feel like I'll never get any better than where I am right now. I liken it to being stuck in a fog, with no road or sign post to show the general direction of where I should be going.

This is in contrast to how E.L. Doctorow had put it. At least he had a road. And headlights.

I think the reason why I feel stuck is because I'm still not used to the idea of writing as being a process. I've grown up writing as a student in a binary way, my essay is either finished or not finished. So, I have learned to ignore the little adjustments I've made to any given work. It doesn't help that I have not written with any regularity, so that neural pathway (or whatever) in my brain that recognizes progress has atrophied, either due my perfectionism or low self esteem. This has lead to writing attempts which the only motivation was to get it finished, which, upon failure, didn't do my sense of worth any good. All I had to show for when I failed this task was that I screwed up. I had forgotten how to sift through the mess to find the good bits that tell me "hey, writing is totes worth trying again."

At any rate, my other hobby has kind of pried that pathway open a bit, enough for me to want to give this writing thing one more go.

I'm going to try to be kind to myself and I'll try to note progress. Learning to write isn't too much different than learning guitar in that there is a final picture in my mind's eye that I'm going for. But I feel that image is far more complex than any pop song that I can play, full of tiny details that I can easily obsess over and lose my way by. I have to remember that that image is just a temporary thing and, much like playing a cover of a song, I'm allowed to deviate and re-deviate from it as many times as I like. Bonus points if that effort looks and sounds good in the end.

Stomachs and Crickets

I can't sleep. My stomach feels like it's running circles under my lungs. I take short breaths as I listen to the crickets chirp. If I was tired, the sound would seem distant, filtered by the fog of my drowsiness. But the chirping is loud. I'm not bothered by the noise, however, so much as the fact that I'm alert. I can't relax.

Is it because I have a lot on my mind? Sure. There is a journalism class that I'd rather sleep through, a Shakespeare lecture I haven't read for, and a creative non-fiction class late in the evening. The last one is especially stressful because I have to critique essays I haven't looked at yet. I also have my own essay up for scrutiny, which is horrible.

I had proposed something different. It was supposed to be a fun paper describing the awesomeness of my plain looks. I had good conversations with friends that I wanted to include in the essay, and I had a point that I was excited to convey: you don't have to jazz yourself up to feel important (actual phrase under construction). However, I had a hard time writing about it. I kept getting bored of the prose and I struggled with concrete details. So, I wrote about the difficulty of writing concretely. I ended up submitting a three and a half page whine about how I can't write. At least, that's how I see it, kind of like this blog. Am I not whining right now?

But I digress. What is really bothering me is my fiction writing, which is not happening. It's my sudden obsession with details, or rather the lack of it in my writing that's causing this.

It used to be that if you let me do my thing, I would come back with a story that had mostly abstractions. "He was angry," "it didn't make sense," and "she liked to sing" made good statements but were backed up by sparse or weak concrete details like "he punched the wall," "they raised their eyebrows," or she hummed a lot." And I would have been fine with all that before. But lately it has bothered me. I would look at a phrase like "he punched the wall" and ask, "okay, so what?" or "what about it?" and realize that there are many answers to choose from. The number of options scared me.

It's a classic case of fearing what's new. Trying to write more concretely is forcing me to think in a way I'm not used to. My usual reaction to the unfamiliar is to hide - so I stop writing.

I'm having a hell of a time fighting the urge to run from the fear. It's hard to move forward when the default mindset is to stand still. But my tense stomach (developing ulcer?) and insomnia are pushing me to get out of this slump. I figure if I conquer this fear and get used to it, these physiological problems will go away. It's not the healthiest way to write, but I'll take what I can get.

Okay, I changed my mind.

I’ve been blocked lately.

I’ve found myself cowering from the computer and its word processor. Coming up with words to express on paper feels like a chore. I can’t just throw everything down on the page and call it a day, no. I have to make sure that it’s coherent, not only to me, but to a professor, a classmate, or some friends. To do that is to tap into a part of my mind that’s sick of analyzing sentences and pulling out meaning or significance from them. The need to string ideas together, to create a flow of phrases that culminate into something useful or entertaining to the reader, has, I feel, taxed me so much that I’ve had to stop writing.

I’ve missed turning in a paper, a thesis submission, and many writing sessions on my notebook. I think it’s burnout, but I don’t want to call it that. I want to think that my mind is overwhelmed. My standards for my writing have changed. I demand more of it, but I don’t feel like I’ve improved to my expectations. Even this blog is starting to look like a gigantic mess to me. I am disheartened.

I hope this is just another problem to get through, a hitch to overcome if I am to ever call myself a writer. Framing it this way makes the whole thing seem less despairing, less pointless. It’s still painful though.

Yeah, yeah, yeah... Writing's hard. I really should just deal with it, huh?

I'm blocked because I'm not keeping my pen to the paper long enough.

Well, I guess it's time to go to work...

Into the Darkness I Go

I’ve been blocked lately.

I’ve found myself cowering from the computer and its word processor. Coming up with words to express on paper feels like a chore. I can’t just throw everything down on the page and call it a day, no. I have to make sure that it’s coherent, not only to me, but to a professor, a classmate, or some friends. To do that is to tap into a part of my mind that’s sick of analyzing sentences and pulling out meaning or significance from them. The need to string ideas together, to create a flow of phrases that culminate into something useful or entertaining to the reader, has, I feel, taxed me so much that I’ve had to stop writing.

I’ve missed turning in a paper, a thesis submission, and many writing sessions on my notebook. I think it’s burnout, but I don’t want to call it that. I want to think that my mind is overwhelmed. My standards for my writing have changed. I demand more of it, but I don’t feel like I’ve improved to my expectations. Even this blog is starting to look like a gigantic mess to me. I am disheartened.

I hope this is just another problem to get through, a hitch to overcome if I am to ever call myself a writer. Framing it this way makes the whole thing seem less despairing, less pointless. It’s still painful though.

Updates

Another quarter has ended at UCR. It was rather hectic, in the sense that I made it rather hectic. I tend to assume the metaphorical, and sometimes literal, fetal position every time I have to work on a homework assignment (see: procrastination). Sure, I destroy the opportunity to work comfortably, but I'll still do the job - once I'm sufficiently worried about passing the class.

It's like I want to see how much I can screw myself over before I finally get to work. Some people call it a fear of failure. A really smart professor had called it the fear of success. Either way, I've kept myself so busy from anxiety that I couldn't write here. Yet, I wonder how much I would write, even without the anxiety of school...

At any rate, here is a list of highlights:

• Had a couple of English classes last quarter which practically beat a habit of reading into me. I read every day now. However, I think I'll shorten my leisure reading to twenty-five or fifty pages a day, instead of the one-hundred and fifty pages a night I had to read for class.


• I can safely say that my writing has improved from a summer of reading and practice, along with last quarter's readings and practice, to the point that:
  
  
  • I wrote a story that seems to have the potential to be published.
  
  
  • I wrote a story that seems to be publishable as is.
  
  
• Oh yeah, I moved to Riverside. Life has been more tolerable ever since.

A teacher suggested that I send one of my stories to a specific venue. I'm not sure if I should send it there, as I have read some of their stories and I think that my story would be a downer for them. I have doubts. Then again, I always have doubts.

Picking Things Apart

One day, I hope to get it.

One day, I hope that all the years of taking in books on writing, seminars on writing, discussions on writing; poring through novels, publish short stories, unpublished short stories, short stories from workshops; and transmuting all those experiences into my free writes, outlines, shitty rough first drafts, and second-third-fourth-plus drafts will help me understand and write a good story.

In many ways, I hope that “mastery” in writing will become automatic, in the sense that improvement will come without an awareness of it. For a couple of years, I’ve tried to bend my consciousness to become a good writer. I have read stories/novels/books on writing, not to enjoy them but to dissect them. I peered through every sentence, looked at every word and tried to make sense of their organization to see how they achieved their effects. While it’s important to analyze text, I became obsessed over it. It was like cleaning grout from a tiled floor rather than a game of Where’s Waldo? I spent dozens of minutes per sentence. I didn’t get a lot of reading done. In the end, I kept giving up because of the frustration.

So, I’ve thrown away a little bit of the control freak inside of me. I’m less likely to initiate anxiety attacks. It’ll also keep me from repeatedly thudding my head against the wall, metaphorically speaking. But I’ll still maintain a keen eye into the workings of fiction. I just don’t want to look so close that I miss something.

I'll Need a New Character Sheet

Characters have been the focus of my freewrites lately. I manage to write down a character's appearance, favorite childhood toy, sexual orientation, therapy bills, politics, savings accounts, and other things that come to mind, all in ten minutes. It's easy for me because I used to churn out these character statistics for sessions of Dungeons and Dragons.

These character sketches are not written well enough to make biographies, as I connect these traits through word/phrase association. Sometimes the combinations are pretty crazy thanks to my strange world view (e.g. a navy brat who likes to scratch her back with a philips screwdriver). Yet, they work out in the end. So, I've finally found a productive way to freewrite, which excites me.

This means that I can write new stories. I'm not very good with plotting ahead, so I rely on my characters to lead me through it. If the characters are strong enough, with many strange, yet believable quirks, they'll end up in good stories. At least, that's what I hope will happen. No worries.

I try not to stress over it. I've done that before, and it's only led me to nothing. So, I'm going to trust in the "practice makes perfect" cliché and stick to it. That's what I want to do. Maybe, that's all I can do.


Oh yeah, one more thing:

I have considered a change in my blog labels because they might be too generic. For example, there are posts that contain rants about my writing, and others that contain tips on writing - but they're both labeled "writing" because they're about my experience in writing. Do you think this is appropriate, or should I diversify my labels? Suggestions are welcome and appreciated. Thanks!

Slushy

I have a lot of folders related to writing in my computer. They have generic names like “Workshop Stories,” “Blogs,” and “Poems” - names that are simply labels to sort out all the writing that I do, like zip codes. However, only one of them is lovingly called “The Slush Pile.” Unlike an editor’s dreaded stack of unread manuscripts, this Slush Pile has a different meaning to me.

I keep any unfinished attempts at writing in this folder: a paragraph of description, two-sentence blog entries, half-baked character sketches, and incomplete short stories that are about a page long. I call those stories “false starts” because they start off great, until I lose momentum at about a page or two when I forget my training and listen to that inner critic, which always throws Kool-Aid at my un-laminated plans.

But putting the writing away in the Slush Pile helps to remind me that any writing that I do is important, whether it’s finished or not. Maybe I’ll improve my writing. That’s the hope anyway.

It's Like Time Travel

Fahrenheit 451 author Ray Bradbury once wrote in his essay, “The Joy of Writing,” that writers should look to their zest, their gusto, as the most important item they should have. My interpretation of this “zest” is the stuff that brings a person to write in the first place, born of inspiration from works previously read, then enhanced by the environment (or vice versa). The writer’s work is supposed to be propelled by this hidden energy.

I may have lost this energy some time during my studies. Years of studying characterization, plotting, revising, and other craft elements, resulted in a level of polish in my writing, which I love. But I feel this has also led to more stiff, uninspired writing. There have been times when I felt overwhelmed by the work because there are so many writing elements to look after, to the point where I avoided writing altogether.

I look back to old stories and blog entries I’ve made throughout the years (the first posts are always fun), and I see the gusto that Bradbury wrote. I find certain genuineness about them. A voice, unhindered by the rules of writing, or even coherence, happily inhabits words written long ago. But, it’s a voice that I have abandoned because it was too wild to control. Besides, I’m not the same person that I was three years ago. It wouldn’t suit me now.

However, I should try to reconnect with my younger self. There’s a lot that he can teach me about the passion for writing.

[Small Update]
After I wrote this blog post, I found this essay by Holly Lisle that describes exactly what I tried to convey here, except far more eloquently. I also recommend reading the essay that proceeds it.

Back in the Bike Seat

I know I haven’t updated in a long time (again). It’s hard to write about writing when I haven’t been doing much of it. And I don’t want to get into rants about not writing. Whining doesn’t get anything done, and I don’t want this blog to dive into fruitless complaints.

But I’ve had plenty to complain about. I avoided writing, like the plague, for the past two months because I was afraid of the time it took to polish it. The inactivity did a number on my self-esteem, however, and I got into a rut. It was this depressing situation that brought me back to writing. My sludgy mood buried my perfectionist nature just long enough to get something down on paper.

So I currently have a muse. Granted, it’s the “eh, what the hell, do it” kind, but I’ll take it. The problem is now I have to keep it alive. Its life support consists of some reading, a little free writing and, maybe, blogging. My girlfriend gave me Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing, while I pulled out of my own collection Hooked, by Les Edgerton; both books on writing. I like books on writing more than I like actual fiction, but that’s where my tastes lie for the moment. I’m running out of topics for my freewrites though, so I may pore into some stories for inspiration.

Freewriting leads to rough drafts, but then it leads to revision. I hate revising, only because it baffles me. Every time I try to polish my first crap draft, my head swims. I don’t even know how to clean my room, much less organize my language. I guess I’ll just have to hammer it out. If I can do that, then I think I’ll finally have what it takes to be a writer.

Then again, I’ve said that on many other occasions…

A Little Exercise...

I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10.

It happens to be the number 3.

Now, this number 3 is about as tall as I am, 5'7", and is heavy like a rock, but it looks like there are tufts of fur on it which are pink and kind of like shag carpet and they hang in the air below it because the number three doesn't havwe any legs and so it moves around like it's hovering so when it moves the shag-like hair of it would fly behind him like he wsa riding a corvette or something - it makes a buzzing sound when it flies like a bee or more like a beetle or maybe a electric shaver - and it smells like chocolate milk chocolate but the number three feels like sandpaper even though it looks like carpet and if you ever lick it it would taste like dried up dirt.






I just freewrote the image of a number three, which was inspired by the number eight that Stephen King wrote about in On Writing. The exercise itself was inspired by my conversation with Goldberry Long with regards to freewriting.

You see, I came to her office because I didn't feel like I was doing the freewrites in her class correctly. One of the stipulations on these freewrites is that I write concretely, yet I always wrote in the abstract. I freewrite like I talk, and I always talk abstractly. When I told her this, Goldberry suggested that the reason why I freewrite in abstract terms is because I think about the words when I write. What I'm supposed to do is think of images to write about. When I come up with an image, all I should do in the freewrite is report what I'm seeing in my mind - using the five senses and using all the words that come to my head. This will allow me to write concretely, with the benefit of the speed that comes with freewriting.

As I think of this, I feel a bit silly. I remember when I first started writing stories I would lose myself in the events in my story that I would forget that I'm typing them up in a computer. That's not how I write stories now. Essentially, I had forgotten that writing a story is about conveying images in my head. I was so worried about diction and syntax and other craft elements that I had completely forgotten, what I think is, the core element of writing. It's what drives a person to write in the first place.

Anyway, I haven't finished my little freewrite/writing exercise yet. I have to ask the question, what do I make of this number 3? Is he sad, happy, lonely, or whimsical? Is he something else? Well, since I'm forced to answer, I think this number 3 is sad because it smells like chocolate and tastes like dirt. I think it desperately wants to taste like it smells but it hasn't reached that goal yet.

So what do you think about this number 3? Of course, it's open to interpretation - mainly because I only spent about a minute to freewrite the thing. I'm sure if I spent more time to freewrite I'll have the chance to put in more detail and lock in this number 3's character.

Warming up to/with Reading

So I was stuck again today. I had a lot of time on my hands, sitting in UCR's Rivera Library at around 2:30 pm. I needed to write and I made a conscious effort, after class, to claim one of the library's computers. Still, I couldn't come up with anything to write or come up with the words to write down. I was confused. How do I write something, again? I kept asking myself this question for another ten minutes.

I had to give up on trying to figure it out because it was frustrating me again (remember the snowball). So, I went on the internet. I found and read a story by Louise Erdrich called "The Reptile Garden" and was fascinated by her use of sensory details, particularly in a make-out scene where even the steel pipes were given the modesty of clothing, in the form of "powdery bandages of asbestos." Hey, I can write that, I thought, and I proceeded to write a page of my story.

Saul Bellow said that "A writer is a reader moved to emulation." Point taken. After I wrote my page, I went home and felt stuck again. I then read an essay by Janet Fitch (which I'm pulled from Writers Workshop in a Book, edited by Alan Cheuse and Lisa Alvarez) called "Coming to Your Senses," where she stressed about describing with the five senses. Inspired, I wrote another half page of some pretty nice description.

I have a page and half of my story right now. At least that's a start. And I'll definitely remember to read more often.

Where to begin...

It always seems to happen this way...

I'll write something that I'm fairly proud of and after a couple of days I feel great: I want to be a writer and I've written something, and all that jazz. But that feeling doesn't last, and soon I find myself fretting over another writing project. While I'm fretting, I blame myself for being lazy/untalented/dumb and that burden that I mentioned last week rests upon my shoulders like a linebacker tackling a quarterback. All the quarterback needed to do was to throw the ball (see: write) and he would have had the pressure relieved from him.

It's funny because I tell myself the same thing. "Just start on it now and you'll be fine," I say to myself. But there's another part of me that tells me differently. He tells me that it's not worth writing if I'm not into it, that I should wait and inspiration will come. Then the words will come faster, and it would be a much more efficient use of my time than trying to slog through one uninspired word after another.

But, the problem with that is the inspiration doesn't come. Or if it does, it comes in hours before my deadline, and I'm forced to come up with something that, while inspired, doesn't have enough time to develop into something meaningful.

I have to be honest, I'm not familiar with the idea of "Invention, then Revision" because I feel the need to revise as I write. Revising is a painful process and I tend to do it from the very beginning.

Maybe I'm not as enthusiastic about writing because I remember the pain of revising. Maybe I just need to get over it.

It's been a while... I want to give this blog thing another go. I guess I'm a sucker for punishment.

I wanted to write a huge blog post announcing my triumphant return to the blogging circuit, but I never got around to it. So here's something that's a little different, an essay:

They Had a Baby Named Idle

I’ve been told that being idle is a process of being reflective, and in many ways that’s true. There have been times when I’ve stopped what I was doing to think things over. I’d step back, for instance when I’m writing essays like this, and say to myself, “Ok, well I’ve probably meandered too much. I wanted to talk about my day at the video store and I ended up talking about my mother’s back problems.” Then, I would fix the situation (erase this, expound on that, steal a joke and paste it there) and be glad for it. Even before I set out to work on something, I make it a point to mull over the subject hours upon hours until a huge light bulb appears over my head, or at least I like to imagine.

However, I’ve begun the habit of thinking things over too much, to the point where the work that I set out to do, like this essay, becomes bogged down by my constant thought of it. I’ll have a great idea for a story, essay, blog post, etc. and work over the details in my head. But the idea snowballs into something so large that I don’t know what to do with it. It’s like a giant ball-and-chain attached to my ankle. Or maybe the better analogy is that these large thoughts can’t fit through the all-important, gold and diamond encrusted Door of Productivity (or the silver-plated Laundry Chute of Industry, for those who don’t believe in doors). I sit there for a long time and do nothing, out of fear that I would do my ideas an injustice by trying to work on them.

I have never had this problem before. I used to be able to put my mind to the task at hand, without worry. I’d go home from school, sit down on my kitchen table, and get the assignment done. I’d look over the work, see that I’ve answered all the questions or otherwise satisfied the requirements, then turn the paper in the following morning. I get my B+ afterward.

Maybe I’ve become too idle when I cared about getting A’s. Or maybe it’s because I started to worry about being perfect. To be fair, I’ve always been a perfectionist. I was really good in the spelling test circuit of elementary school, where I had 100%’s on the majority of my 20-word tests (just ask my mom). Math was an easy thing for me too, before I had to deal with those damn Greek letters in my formulas. For the most part, I was a fairly good student, and a good worker. I would only get lower grades in areas that required more than rote memorization. If there isn’t a clear set of instructions, then I’m usually at a loss. Writing this essay comes to mind. It’s a bit of a drag for me because there are numerous paths to finishing one, and it’s hardly the same when you write another. I buckle under the freedom that it gives me.

I find it ironic that I’ve chosen to pursue writing, where I make slow progress. Why shouldn’t I work toward something that’s easy for me and, perhaps, even more lucrative? You could say that I do it because I see it as a challenge to overcome or that I’m not satisfied with push-button type jobs, and I wouldn’t disagree with you. But as I near the end of this essay, I feel a sense of comfort. The thoughts that had been building up inside of me had passed through that door (or the laundry chute) and I can move on knowing I’ve produced something that means a lot to me. I want to be a writer, and I’ve just written something. So that’s good enough.