I just finished my eighth novel. Yes, I've only published one. No, you'll never see the earlier ones. It would be more charitable to call them novel-shaped objects. But they sure taught me a lot about getting things done. This is not about the writing, particularly. There are some universal truths about work I've learned through this process that I hope you'll find at least interesting if not helpful. (That should be the new tagline of this newsletter! Hopefully, this is interesting if not helpful…) 1. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS PROCRASTINATION Don't get me wrong, I am a master procrastinator. Witness eight novels. It took active work to not publish after a while. But the more I work, the more I realize delaying work, writer's block, fear, and all of these tactics are rooted in good instincts in my brain. It usually means something is wrong with the work itself and if I resist writing something, it shouldn't get written. Sometimes it means I'm terrified of the marketing side … [Read more...] about 8 Sanity-Saving Hacks I Learned Writing 8 Novels
Meaning of Life
4 Ways to Make Perfect Days Less Depressing
DOGS AND BONES AND HUMAN MOTIVATION There's an apocryphal story about racing Grayhounds and how when they catch the dog or the bunny, they cease to race. Though there is no confirmation of this story anywhere in actual racing circles. I am a little suspicious of it because, though I'm allergic to anything with fur, when normal dogs catch anything, they seem to be quite happy to repeat the experience all day. But it's a useful metaphor about human behavior, so let's pretend it's true, which is also very common human behavior. Either the dog is completely satisfied by that one bone and never tries to run again, or he's so pissed off that the bone or the bunny is made of cardboard, he also never runs again. This past week, I caught the bunny. Twice. One day this week, I checked off everything on my to do list. Not just the explicit list that has a prayer of occasionally looking realistic, but also the unspoken expectations I hold myself to, that if I ate … [Read more...] about 4 Ways to Make Perfect Days Less Depressing
Lesson from Star Wars: How to Fail Spectacularly
MY FIRST BRUSH WITH SKYWALKERS I was 7 years old and wandered into the living room to see what my parents were watching... And froze. The scene playing out onscreen was unlike anything I had ever seen in my short life. It was Jabba's palace in Return of the Jedi, and the only thought in my head was that they had discovered Sesame Street for grown-ups. (Which, given Yoda's antecedents, was truer than I realized.) I was transfixed. It was dynamic, tense, and shocking for a girl whose main media diet was Disney and PBS. I was hooked. ONCE A FAN GIRL I watched all of the films, over and over again, which at that point numbered three. (And have never gotten over the fact that I watched them out of order and never got the shock of Luke's Father.) I ditched school for the first and only time with friends from marching band to see the first prequel when it came out in theaters. I avoided the … [Read more...] about Lesson from Star Wars: How to Fail Spectacularly
The Perils of Advice from Fiction Characters
Photo: Theresa Mahler BEWARE THE AUTHOR PHILOSOPHERS (Though you can learn other things from authors like how to stay sane while doing a really weird job...) The primary purpose of entertainment is to entertain, but sometimes, especially in science fiction and fantasy, an author can't resist waxing philosophically. It’s a dangerous condition filled with aphorisms and sagely nodding heads. Fortunately, there’s only one science-fiction author who has worked their way into a full-blown religion: L. Ron Hubbard with his Scientology, so we all know how good of an idea THAT is. But even those authors who know they're writing fiction can't resist the perfect saying to be excerpted and printed on Etsy in a beautiful decorative frame. ADVICE I ONCE LOVED Here is some of the advice I have taken from various famous fictional accounts of life that have not stood the test of time. First, a caveat: I love these properties. They are great works … [Read more...] about The Perils of Advice from Fiction Characters
Tragedy and Triumph are group delusions
Photo Behzad No We decide this together: what is healthy or not, stressful or not? I owe a lot to Elizabeth Stanley and her book Widen the Window for her discussion of the connection between stress and trauma and how we think of them as worlds apart when they really are a spectrum. Though I've extrapolated into the healthy side of things for my work. Yes, we have to live in reality, but we shape reality with a lot of story. What doesn't kill you... The fact that some things are good for us and some kill us is not a controversial statement. I think everybody knows that some things make us happy and some things make us miserable, and some things traumatize us and blight the rest of our lives so we end up eating a pint of ice cream made of avocado because that would be healthier at 3 am when we’re convinced we’re going to be fired, our chosen political party will never win again, and humanity will be extinct in a century... No? Just me? One note: trauma is a … [Read more...] about Tragedy and Triumph are group delusions
Could You Be Addicted to Outrage??
I'm Kyler and I'm an outrage addict. It's been fifteen minutes since my last hit of cortisol. This is the story of how I thought I had a totally normal, healthy relationship with the internet, but learned I was actually completely screwed. It took a sixty-day migraine with vertigo to get me offline. Did you know vertigo was a symptom of migraine? Or that one of the primary triggers is screens? One day last year, I started to feel like a cork bobbing on the ocean while someone hammered on the back of my head. Fun times. And then it went on for months. Even after I figured out what was going on and that screens were my primary trigger, I just kept looking at them. All the time. As spikes were driven into eyeballs. I was that addicted to terror and outrage, and I was a pretty casual user. You know this. This is not news. But do you truly, madly, deeply know this? Because I was completely fooled. I thought I understood. I did not get into flame wars. I had the … [Read more...] about Could You Be Addicted to Outrage??
Life is just dirt and sunshine
Photo: fotomanu_93 Here are some tricks to help see the existing world in new ways and hopefully shine a different light on the water we’re swimming in and come up with new solutions in the existing world. Or just make you giggle. Fundamental #1: Life is dirt and sunshine, full of ocean. Every bit of energy, movement, heat, light, thought, and life in the world comes from our sun (with very few nuclear exceptions). It shines down on the world; the plants take dirt and marry it with that sunshine and fill it up with water; we eat the plants and break down those bonds to make ourselves. Complex life is just dirt and sunshine full of ocean. And it’s not just that we do this once; we run out of ocean every few minutes and sunshine and dirt every few hours. We are constantly remaking ourselves and trying to maintain our own complexity. And we will eventually, inevitably fail, decaying back into just the dirt without any ocean or sunshine, and we know it. It … [Read more...] about Life is just dirt and sunshine
The Manifesto to End Manifestos
“Ha-ha!' the fox laughed. '*Just* stories, you say, as if stories mean nothing? Stories are the stuff that sticks the world together. Stories are the mud from which we're all made. The power to imagine stories is the power to remake the world as we dream it.” ― C. Alexander London, The Wild Ones, Moonlight Brigade Text version, in case you don’t do images: The Manifesto of Manifestos One: Categorize everything with price per pound and country of origin …. Sorry, wrong manifest. Two: Synergize outside the box but in your wheelhouse to grab all low-hanging fruit and stretch your goals. Three: Use variable fonts so the big words stick out. Four: Don't believe every stupid thought in your head and believe in your dreams and in people and in fairies. Five: Manifestos should be short and sweet with under 5 points. Six: Live like you are going to die, but probably not tomorrow, because you are likely one standard deviation away from 72.4 years … [Read more...] about The Manifesto to End Manifestos