2012 in Review

I can say without exception that 2012 has been the best year of my life. I will always remember it as the year I finally 'woke up'. You see, to me, it always felt pre-ordained that I was meant to write stories. Not be a writer. Not even publish or sell a story. But writing stories? Yes, that had to be me. I knew it from the first time I read a story and was amazed at the magic of a good book. I would say to myself, 'How could anyone do this?' but deep down it was a thrill to wonder how I would do it.

I've always wanted to write stories, but never had the discipline to do it. I thought I was so chock full of talent, so well read, that I had merely to go out, live life to the fullest, read some books and when I sat down some day and put my fingers to a keyboard, the magic would flow. Little did I realize that everyone is out there living life to the fullest. And many of them read more than I do. And many more want to write just like I do. And many many more have written wayyy more than I have. Oh, and talent? Doesn't exist. If it does, I don't care about it. Talent is an excuse created by the lazy to justify the successes of the hard working. Give me work ethic over talent every day of the week. When you grow up half-assing just about everything in life because that's all life required of you, it's hard to realize that if you want to achieve what you feel is your destiny, then you need to go full bore. You need to push the other stuff away that eats at your minutes and put every fiber of your being toward what really matters, and you need to pay the bills at the end of the day. It needs to become a second job; it's something you commit to without reservation. I wasn't ready for that lesson until this past year.

It was in March 2012 when the best most stubborn story idea yet finally held me long enough to type more than ten pages and call it quits. If you'll recall through past posts, I made a goal to write 2,000 words every day. It's not about writing 14,000 words a week (though that is a fantastic side effect) nearly as much as it is about that every day part. Going a few days without that story in my head makes it stale and awkward. If you mean to write one story in your life, by all means. Stretch it out. But I want to write stories, and that means daily production. It doesn't have to be 2,000 necessarily, but that threshold works for me. If I can't get 2,000 on a day, I have to get something and then I can make it up later in the week. Either way, if you truly care about a craft or a calling, you have to do it every single day or you damn well better have a good reason. And no, being tired or drained doesn't count. Those are excuses rooted in your willpower. That's one thing I learned in 2012.

I've also learned that writing a first draft of a story is every bit the same thrill as reading a story for the first time. Sitting down at my desk every day and opening my laptop, I would think to myself, Now what will happen today? From early March to late June, I wrote on a near daily basis and I finished the first draft of what will hopefully some day be a novel that, if it isn't published, I can at least share with friends and family. What a rush. The first long form story I'd ever finished. I'd never felt so proud of myself.

Unfortunately it was a mess, and I knew it from the second I printed it out. I knew it before then really. I knew it was a hopeless mess when I was about halfway through the draft, but you know what? I kept going until I reached The End. I'm damn happy I did it now, but back then? On June 20th, 2012? Looking at that first draft? In the words of Jack Donaghy from 30 Rock, "Good God, Lemon." I needed a break.

I spent the next three months writing in different forms; it was mostly sports writing. I hooked up with a great site that allowed me tremendous freedom to contribute as I saw fit. I moved forward in writing weekly columns about the Buffalo Bills, but my fiction was drying up. I tried writing a sequel to that God Awful First Draft, but it just wasn't working. By about 50-60 pages in, the story was like a train running wildly off the tracks in the middle of the desert. I shut it down at that point and once again I found myself in that familiar slump. That place in everyone's mind in which you seriously question everything you've thought about yourself up to that point. "OK," I thought, "I gave it my best shot. It sucked. Maybe I'm just bad at this." It's weird because normally I beat myself up in that moment of introspection, and for a brief period, I did. The fiction dried up, the sports writing took over, and I wondered if fiction just wasn't my gig.

But something happened between the end of summer and mid-October. I read over my first draft in a marathon session and yeah, it was bad. Cringes were common. Forehead slaps came once a page. But in the end, it wasn't as bad as I'd remembered. The draft had sat and stewed for so long that I didn't feel the same emotional attachment to the paper in front of me. I could overlook silly errors because no one will ever read that draft. More importantly though, I felt a deep stirring. I could do better. Even more importantly, I knew how I could do better.

I wrote every single day between October 21st and December 16th and I finished the second draft of said novel. Again, it's shit. It's really more like the first draft that I wanted to write, but couldn't the first time because I was so enthralled by the process that I couldn't keep my head straight. This second draft was like running a hot knife through butter. The people, the images, the locations all came clearer, sharper, more meaningful to me. Everything made sense, and the ending? Well, it's a work in progress, but dammit I reached it. Again. And in a month or two, I'm going to come back to that thing and start doing some real work on it until it's done. It doesn't matter how many shitty attempts you make, if you're willing to stand up after rubbing your face in your own crap and do it all over again, then the future is yours. No one can tell you otherwise. That's another thing I learned in 2012.

I've never made a resolution, and I don't intend to start. But 2013 looms large though because I want to extend these bursts of productivity and make this a consistent process, not just something isolated to the rush I feel from one story. I want to do this every day throughout 2013 because I want to get better at writing, plain and simple. No other motive. I've worked in Corporate America. I've worked in dingy bars and shiny airports, and I've been a manager of a million dollar budget. None of it matters. None of it feels real. None of it is mine. Writing though, writing is mine. No one can take that from me. No one can take credit for my work (unless they raid my apartment). People can tell me it's crap and they can refuse to publish whatever I do write, but I will keep coming back. I will keep learning and I will keep improving. Because this is what I wanted to be since I was kid laying on my bed reading Squanto: A Warrior's Tale for the umpteenth time, and when you want to be something, the best way to achieve that dream is to just go do it. Sleep is for the old. Make time every day or it doesn't matter. That's another big lesson from 2012.

In ten years, twenty years, whatever, I hope that 2012 will not be seen as the best year of my life. Otherwise I've regressed and it's all for naught. I hope I can look back on this past year as a stepping stone. I hope I can see that this was the year I learned how I want to live the rest of my life. More importantly, I learned how to achieve that, and what it takes to get there. I want to value those I love, build a life with the woman who completes me, and write until my fingers bleed. Oh, and pay the bills of course. Everything outside of that is gravy.

Happy Holidays, everyone. See you in the next 'Best Year of My Life'. May it be the same for you.

Tears shed for the victims in Colorado

Comparing tragedies is a crude way to quantify human loss, and I would never say any one thing is worse than another, but for some reason this theatre shooting is hitting me personally harder than 9/11. It's one thing to have terrorists attack you. They're enemies waging war. Fucked as it is, there is a twisted sub-culture behind the whole thing.

But this. I mean what can anyone do? Maximum security movie theatres? Metal detectors at the playground? Some insane motherfucker can come from literally anywhere in this country at any time and just kill people who have worked their whole lives and touched how many others. I think about everything I want to do with my life and to just have it all snuffed out because someone wanted to be a fucking Batman villain is a terrifying prospect. I can't even imagine having kids right now. I wouldn't let them anywhere near a theatre for at least a month. I mean it. Copycats are just as crazy as their inspiration, and I would take that threat very seriously.

It's all just unpredictable, senseless, and awful and you know it won't be the last time and you don't know where it will come from. Sad, wish more things (and all people) were as simple and sweet as this song below. In the meantime, I'm going to use a public bathroom and hope I don't get shot on the way. You never know anymore.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvkIZXZe4iY

Done

Rough draft is finished. I am exhausted, elated, worrisome, you name it. It's a heaping piece of shit and I kind of want to kick it around like a peasant child, but methinks there's hope in there. We'll see. It's a long ways off. The plan is to let it stew for (probably) the rest of the summer. Then once the leaves start falling, I'll dust it off and start the (massive) rewrite. Pretty much every sentence is going to get raped, but hey that's what it gets for walking the streets at night. I'm looking forward to writing some lighter fare and possibly even getting back into some open mics. Writing for stand-up is so so different from writing a novel that it's going to probably take a shift in attitude when I sit at the keyboard, but I do miss writing jokes. I'm a bit burnt out on writing hardcore shit so I'm definitely taking a break for a bit, but I have to fight the temptation to laze too long. One day very easily turns into one week without writing. If anything, I'm hoping to actually write in this blog on a regular basis to keep the fires stoked. In the meantime, stay classy kids.

The Climax

Just wrote a big pivotal scene which will probably pose as THE CLIMAX for the novel and I have to say...writing is just so much easier when you do it every day. This was a scene I wrestled with for a while, but when you write every day these scenes become easier. The words come quicker, the people are fresher and everything is more organic. If I take even one day off, it takes a longer time to start the engines on the next day. Monday was my first blank writing day of May and Tuesday became my slowest starting writing day. But I finished Tuesday strong with a scene I liked and then I roared back today and finished it. It's that easy. Tomorrow another scene. Friday, another. You don't quit until it's done and when it's done, you start something else. If I can do that, I win. Frankly I am not in this to lose.

Another month, another tally, oh and there's music.

Well April was a tad more successful than March as far as raw writing production is concerned. In March, I had four circles (meaning no writing took place that day) and finished with 52,000 words written in the 31 days of the month. In April, I had two circles and wrote 56,000 words. I'm especially happy with that because it's clear improvement in that I took two days out of March and added 2k words/day to those circles AND found time to make up words in a 30 day month. So in two months of serious dedication to the craft, I've put up 108,000 words. I'm good with that.

If I haven't made it clear in previous posts, I'll try again now. The reason I'm so hung up on these words is because my goals in writing aren't just to write a book, or even to get it published. I want to write for the rest of my life, and frankly I don't want to do anything else. The more I write, the freer I feel, the better I live. It's the simplest way I can put it. I don't like day jobs and I don't like pandering. I'm not married and I don't have kids, so what am I waiting for? If ever I'm going to reach a dream of writing every day and actually succeeding, I have to hold myself accountable. And that means tracking words, then holding those words in my face if I don't meet my quota of words. Hopefully, this becomes a life long habit, or at least one I have until I'm happily at my goal.

Granted, these are all first draft words. To me, these are about 2/3 as useful as a second draft word and maybe 2/5 as useful as final draft words. But you can't have final drafts without first having a sketch. I'm trying to blaze through at this point. I was working toward getting my characters to a unifying experience and then put them through the horrors of said experience. Now the story starts at that unifying spark and my narration has strengthened considerably thanks to that. I am no longer allowing myself to look back at previously written chapters until I consider the first draft done. Then it shall sit in a hole for a long, long time while I write its sequel. Well, that's the plan anyways.

Now, for the music:

Been a while, I know, but it's better than ever. Two thousand words gets easier and easier to write every day. Just starting to let go, let the story take me where it will, then worry about revising later on. That has to be the key. No more rewrites, no more looking back, not til the story's told. Then the painting can begin.

Peace.

I feel like if I don't post in the next couple days, this blog will officially fall to idle status...again. And really, I don't want that to happen. I never want it to happen. Sometimes it happens. Let's move on.

NHL Playoffs. This is really what I think is going on. I've had a pretty tough week writing wise. Everything leading up to this week had been pretty swell. The pace lingered slightly below 2k/day on the words output, the story was moving in an all right direction (it's been more focused on learning one character for a while before moving on to a second and third, etc.), but the past few days have dipped and I blame the NHL playoffs.

I usually love to make big prediction posts about hockey, but if there's anything I've learned from past prediction posts about hockey it's that hockey is, for the most part, unpredictable. More so than any sport relying on playoff series formats to decide championships, hockey is the sport that requires the perfect blend of talent, scheming, luck, GOALTENDING and, the two favorite words of all team sport coaches, grit and hustle.

Going into the playoffs, I would have picked the Penguins and Predators to play in the Cup Finals. Right now I could replace the Penguins with their soon-to-be vanquisher the Flyers and feel safe about that pick. But really, safe is relative in hockey playoffs, where a guy like Brian Boyle can punch a star player on the opposing team in Game 1 and then get jumped and pounded by a player specifically brought into Game 2 to jump and pound Brian Boyle.

I could post endless links that would show you the last week in playoffs action where hockey somehow reverted to the past where fast skating, high goal scoring and loads of fisticuffs and team-wide brawls when you least expect them. Think the play's over when a goal's scored? Try again. It's beautiful. I've watched the NHL playoffs for as long as I've had a TV, but if you too are one of the fortunate billion to own a TV as well and you have any desire to watch sporting at its finest and most emotional, do tune in to the NHL playoffs.