Burnout

After a remarkably successful month of fiction writing, in which I believe I wrote over 9,000 words' worth of fiction (and I didn't intend to include that reference, but apparently I did), I have found myself in the regrettable position of feeling completely unmotivated as far as my writing is concerned and with barely even the ability to write semi-coherent poems.

My problem is that I am far too real of the fictitious nature of fiction right now. Fiction is imaginary; we all know that. We all ought to know that. However, we should never have to know that fiction is fake, and especially not when we're reading it, and especially not when we're writing it. It's said that, if you don't believe in your story, no one will, and I personally can't bring myself to believe in any story, my own included.

It's one thing to read someone else's fiction, something that didn't originate in your own mind and thus something you could possibly believe in. It's quite another to write your own and understand, from the beginning of the process to the end, that you have come up with this, that it is your job to make it good and make others believe in it. It's almost like being expected to take shelter in a structure you're currently building.

I can't think of a single tale worth telling, a single story that hasn't been written before, a single character or idea or concept worth believing in. It's been great so far but frankly, I'm exhausted right now, and if I'm going to be even more frank, I've been exhausted ever since last year, as far as writing and being able to tell good stories has gone, and it hasn't gotten significantly better.

I'll be frank again. I hate talking about this weakness on this blog, because while I'm (thankfully) nowhere remotely near being a "famous writer" and thus don't have "famous writer" expectations on me (i.e. to be a shining example to all other writers out there), I do know there are people who read this who look up to me as a writer, and to them, I am the "shining example", and being so blatant and nearly pessimistic (even though the pessimism is caused by perceptions of my current reality and expectations made by judging off of the continual nature of this reality)...well, I just don't think it's good. There are other places I can essentially complain, why am I doing it here?

That's a very good question and I haven't got an answer, but maybe it's to show that writing, at its heart, is a very miserable business and we do it anyway and I don't know why and it probably makes us insane but it's what we do so we do it. And that tiny part of me that isn't stained with cynicism and that doesn't regard reality wants to say that, even if we could choose not to, we'd never consider doing anything but what we're doing.

After going to the science museum

The science museum was brilliant. It mostly focused on astronomy and biology, which is great because those are the two sciences in which I am the most interested. Seeing the Endeavour was an absolutely amazing experience. It made the universe feel almost like a bigger place for being not entirely out of reach for us here on Earth. I got some ideas for stories and poems, and I think I ended up educating some kids who were at the museum (they were looking at exhibits excitedly and I told them a bit about what they were looking at to help them learn. One adult actually asked me if I was a teacher; I said no, I just know stuff.) I think I really did learn a lot at the museum, or at least some (there are some facts about stars and galaxies and telescopes I will retain), and that coupled with the rare opportunity to see such an important object in the history of astronomy is really fantastic.

The Beauty in Forgetting

Today, I am going to the space museum with my family. Technically, given that it's the California Science Center, the museum's got to do with more things than space, but we're going to see the Endeavor space shuttle, and they do have an air and space section, apparently. So I expect to see space sorts of things.

Even though I'm a science fiction writer (or perhaps because I'm a science fiction writer), I take an interest in actual science and while I'm really awful at retaining what I've learned, I enjoy learning about it. You see, I have a problem: my memory is so awful that it's difficult for me to learn things. (I'm currently in college and I have no idea how I'm able to pass my classes, much less with the kind of good grades I pass with.) The possibly nice thing about learning something and forgetting it, however, is that I get to learn it all over again. Say I learn about how galaxies are believed to be held in place by the gravity of a supermassive black hole in their centers - I learn that, think, "Oh, that's so cool!" and forget it. But I hear it again, think, "Oh, that's so cool!" and maybe I forget it again, maybe I don't, but I've been exposed to a really amazing fact and it's amazing both times. (Incidentally, the thing about supermassive black holes is one of the few actual astronomy facts I CAN remember.)

This reminds me of the story of the old man with Alzheimers' who forgot who his wife was, but he saw her every day when she visited the rest home he lived in, and every day, he fell in love with her and told her he wanted to marry her. When she said they were already married, he thought that was the most wonderful thing in the world. But because he forgot her, he could fall in love with her every time they met again. I'm not saying that's a beautiful or ideal love story (it's really quite sad) but there's a bit of beauty in it because what could have solely sad or unfortunate also allowed for the constant rediscovery of something that truly was beautiful.

Most likely this trip to the science center will result in me remembering things that I learned in school or from books or even just from hearing them from knowledgeable people, things I'd forgotten due to my inability to retain information. Everything I learn, whether I knew and forgot it or if I truly didn't know it before, will be beautiful and new again, and I think that's wonderful.

Poofy's Pastrami

Let me tell you a story about something that happened in my childhood that I still think is funny and relevant.

The story is about something called "Poofy's Pastrami". It was a restaurant, and while I never ate there, it was a familiar part of my childhood because I passed it on the way from school to my grandparents' house. A lot of the time, my mum would pick me up from school and take me to my grandparents' house (which was fairly nearby), and the route we took would take us by a construction site.

They were building (or attempting to build) what was most likely a restaurant called Poofy's Pastrami, and we could deduce this from the presence of a large billboard-like sign advertising such an establishment. The part of the sign we found funniest was a cartoon drawing of a black man holding a pastrami sandwich and looking very pleased about it. Undoubtedly he was Poofy, and he was showing the world his pastrami and how wonderful it was and how they should all come to eat at the fine establishment his workers were busy building.

The odd thing about Poofy's Pastrami was that it always seemed to be under construction. They were always  building the place, but it never seemed to get built. There is something inherently funny about a restaurant with a silly name and a silly billboard that seems to be under permanent construction. My mother and I recognized the humor in this, and we would react accordingly when passing it. She would say something like, "There's Poofy," and I'd say, "And we still can't have his pastrami." (Not that we intended to go there upon its completion. Neither of us much cared for pastrami, though we definitely liked making fun of it.)

A curious thing happened, however. After about a year of construction, Poofy's Pastrami vanished. Gone was the construction site. Gone was the billboard with the restaurant's name. Gone was the man who gave the restaurant its name. There was nothing to suggest that Poofy's Pastrami had ever existed.

My mother and I didn't find this mysterious or odd - after all, this happens all the time, restaurants being under construction for a year and ultimately never happening - and we incorporated it into our humor. She'd say, "Goodbye, Poofy," and I'd say, "We never got to have his pastrami." Poofy's Pastrami was a thing that was and then just as soon was not.

Things like Poofy's Pastrami are far more common than anyone would like to admit. Things are planned and started but never finished. They take a long time and turn out to be colossal failures in that they attract people's attention and even become the source of jokes, but they don't happen. The restaurant never happens. People are left with the memory of a pastrami place that never was, even though it tried to be. Things are planned and do not happen and everyone remembers, at least in the back of their minds, the thing that never was but tried to be.

But there is a bright side to this fact of failure. Sometimes, under a different set of circumstances, in a different place with different people, they are attempted, and they are accomplished. I looked up "Poofy's Pastrami" online, just for curiosity's sake, and I found out that there are operating establishments under that name and with the sign depicting the African American Poofy with his pastrami (looking pleased as ever). Somewhere in this world, a Poofy's Pastrami was built and succeeded.

Ultimately, the story of Poofy's Pastrami gives us hope that, even if things fail under a certain set of circumstances, they can be tried again under different ones and succeed, and even the failures can give people a much-needed laugh.

A short story

Last night, I finished writing a short piece of fiction that took me about two days to write and that was less than 1,200 words long. It may or may not be the final project I use for my creative writing class (because, even though I'm the teacher, I did all the in-class work with my students, and I want to do the final project - a complete short story - with them because I think that's a good idea). It's a silly, pointless bit of science fiction that involves a room full of doors that all lead back to the room containing them and two scientists who really dislike each other. I'll edit it today (or at least read it and see if I can make it more coherent or somesuch) and see if it's at all worthy to submit to literary magazines. I've been lately unable to accurately determine the quality of my own work, but I suspect everyone's like that.

Continuing

While teaching my writing class today, I was confronted with a fact I often talk about but seldom like to face the reality of: I hate to write. I do it fairly regularly, but not profusely, and it's almost always because I'm forcing myself to do so. I spend too much time agonizing over words whose placement most people will probably not care about, and I hate it a good deal of the time. About a quarter of the time, it's okay or even enjoyable, but most of the time, it's a chore. 

George R.R. Martin said, "Some writers enjoy writing, I am told. Not me. I enjoy having written." Unfortunately, I seldom even enjoy having written. I wrote a 10,000-or-so words-long novella last autumn. I keep forgetting about it, because I pushed myself to write most of it, and when I was finished with it, I was relieved, but only in the sense that one is relieved with having finished a long, tedious, uncomfortable chore. I was not proud of my work. I was glad to have it out of the way, but that was it.

When my students deviated from the subject of character development to ask me how I keep myself writing (such tangents occur frequently in this class, and I encourage them), I told them that mostly I have daily wordcounts for myself and I'm fairly good at forcing myself to do work even when I didn't want to. But something urged me to let on to the fact that I'm less of a writing role model than they'd believe, and I told them the truth.

"You know, I very seldom feel like writing. I have no love for the art anymore, and every time I sit down to write, I'm forcing myself. Every single time. I don't know why I do it, other than that it's the thing I do. But really, I'm personally drained as far as writing goes. It's remarkably difficult and I don't know why I do it. May I get morbid? I'm going to make a morbid analogy. For me, giving up on writing is a bit like giving up on life. I force myself to do it, and I don't feel like doing it anymore, even though the people around me think I have such joy and skill at it, and I guess I could choose to stop, but I realize that figuring out how to quit and actually following through with it is much more hassle than I need, so I keep at it."

This whole thing was being overseen by a teacher who worked at the school I was teaching this at, and while she didn't interrupt my morbid comparison between ending my writing and suicide, she did say, "But you know, I think this proves that you're really a writer. Because your inspiration ebbs and flows, and you keep going on anyway and making yourself write. And one day, your inspiration will come back, and you'll have written throughout that whole time."

I was taken aback at this potentially true and startlingly hopeful statement. I gave her some sort of thank-you before breaking the prior line of conversation and got back to the point of the difference between static and dynamic characters.

After class was done, the kids thanked me and went off, and the teacher approached me and said something much like, "Your ability to write even though you don't feel like it is admirable. It shows you're a true writer. You don't quit, you keep doing it. And someday your inspiration will return. You're just going through a dry spell now. Did this start when your mother died?" (She died about five months ago.)

"No," I said. "It's gone on for over a year now."

"It'll end," she replied. "I was reading about Ernest Hemingway and how he was the same as you. He hated writing sometimes, but he always made himself do it. It proved he was a writer. You're a writer."

And maybe I am. Maybe a writer isn't someone with a bunch of brilliant ideas that they write out but someone who's able to make themself write out the ideas when there's no desire or even brilliance. Maybe a writer is someone who doesn't have the sense to give up. Maybe a writer is the person who decides that it would be harder to quit this life than carry on with it, and they choose the lesser of two difficulties and continue doing what they were doing.

I tell people that, by this point, I'm writing because "it's what I do, and by this point, it's so much of who I am that I can't stop". Maybe that makes me more of a writer than anyone who does it for love and who couldn't continue if that love went away.

Upcoming class

Well, I'm really very excited about tomorrow, because tomorrow is when my writing class starts. Yes, I am teaching a creative writing class this week. I'm teaching a bunch of homeschooled children from my little sister's homeschool program about creative writing. It consists of lessons about the different aspects of creative writing. Topics we'll cover include structure of a story, how to make realistic characters, the importance of setting, etc.

As I teach the class, I will probably make blog entries about the things I teach. I'm also going to give the kids a long speech at the end of the class about things that I personally learned because of writing, in some way or another, and that are good things to bear in mind when going about life. I believe I'll make a post featuring that list of things. It's actually a rather interesting list, and I think people would benefit from it.

Small but Amazing Goals

Ladies, gentlemen, and variations thereupon, I have a new goal on my bucket list. And unlike my other "goals" (such as going to outer space or seeing a giant tube worm in person), this one is actually realistic.

My challenge - get work accepted by publications from all six inhabited continents (and Antarctica, if they have literary magazines there).

I already have poems accepted on four continents (North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia). Getting work accepted in Africa and South America shouldn't be amazingly hard. It's difficult, but it's possible. And being able to say "I've got poems published on all six inhabited continents" - wow, that'd be amazing, wouldn't it?

There's something really nice about setting small but amazing goals for yourself, isn't there? Even if it's something that's not that big to the world at large but that's big or important to yourself. It's not THAT hard to get work published in all six inhabited continents, but man am I going to feel proud of myself when I do so. What if everyone had a small but amazing goal that they set for themselves that would make them incredibly proud and happy when they'd succeeded at them? People might be slightly happier.

Short stories and scarf-making

Well, today's my last day in the mountains. I go back home today (in a few hours, actually).

I started and nearly finished a science fiction "short story". I say "nearly finished" simply because it's not quite finished yet, , and I use "short story" in quotes because I'm a little over 6,000 words in and I don't know if this makes it something that's not a short story or what.  It'll be regrettably hard to sell, but fortunately, it's sci-fi, and that's not amazingly hard to sell. (What's wrong with me. All I think about when writing a story is "can I get it published somewhere".)

Also, I finished making a scarf that I will probably end up selling to someone. (It's for the dad of a friend; my friend has two Doctor Who scarves that I made, one of which I financed, and he requested I make him one that was "more manly". I have no clue how to make a "manly" Tom Baker scarf given that it's already associated with a male character, but I used smaller needles and made it shorter, and maybe the obvious differences will trick him into thinking it's manlier. I'm good at tricking people into thinking things, especially if I'm supposedly an expert on said things.)

It's been a very productive holiday after all, and I'm very pleased with myself and what I've done.

Fourth of July and anthologies

Happy Fourth of July, everybody! I'm writing this entry from Idyllwild (which is a place in the mountains in California, which is where I happen to live). I'm here on holiday for the Fourth and I seem to be getting a fair bit of writing done (including - gasp! - some fiction, something I've not been very good at for a while).

Anyhow, I've got some exciting news relating to my writing. I've previously mentioned the Romanian litmag Nazar Look, which has in the past accepted two of my poems. Well, I got something in my e-mail the other day, saying there was a contract I ought to sign. I didn't know what it was at first, but when I looked at it, I found out that it was an agreement for usage of my two poems in a poetry anthology Nazar Look is putting out. This is significant. Not only is my work going to be anthologized for the first time, the publishers asked to be able to anthologize it. This isn't like submitting something and hoping they'll accept it. It's the difference between an actor auditioning for a role and an actor being called by a film studio because they want them to play that role. Man, I love progress.

So that's how things are going. For anyone reading this who lives in America, happy Fourth of July, because independence is awesome. For anyone reading this who doesn't live in America, I'm a happy American having an American holiday. And for anyone reading this from any country, I'm personally pleased for the state of my writing career, so at least hurrah for something!

Humor in Other Languages

It’s fascinating and a little sad how I will probably never be able to fully appreciate Russian humor.

A friend of mine (who happens to be Russian) was over yesterday, and at some point, the subject of Russian humor came up. She explained to me what Russian humor is like – often dark, self-deprecating, and full of wordplay or at least amusing phrases that are very funny in Russian but astonishingly not-funny in English. Some of the jokes she translated into English, I found amusing, but for the most part, I understood on an intellectual level that they should amuse me, but the emotional level (the level that makes you actually laugh) just wasn’t getting it. The “humor” part of “Russian humor” was lost on me because I’m simply not Russian. Yes, I suppose I could learn Russian and then experience the jokes in the language in which they are actually funny. But currently, I do not speak Russian, and Russian humor continues to frustrate me with how I know it’s funny but I don’t feel it.

The way language works is a tragic marvel. People who appreciate it (and this includes writers) can look into its various nuances and mine tremendous wordsmithing value from it. You know your own language and you know what sounds amusing and what doesn’t. You know your native tongue’s inherently funny words, and since you get it on an emotional and intellectual level, you stifle the urge to crack up when you hear them in serious contexts. Fellow speakers of your language will understand. They share your understanding of it.

People who don’t understand your language, however, will not find your humor so amusing. Much like something will sound hysterically funny in your head but incredibly stupid out loud, so the comedic value of a phrase or joke will be lost when you have to translate it into a foreign language. No one can really say the exact reason this so, which is a testament to an indescribable, ineffable quality that languages, individually and as a whole, have in the psyches of those who speak them.

As a result, my friend tells me Russian jokes translated into English, and I know they’re funny but I don’t laugh.