On Beginning a Story

For the past few months, we’ve been tinkering with what I call the three-body problem of beginning a story.

The idea is that a three-body problem in classical mechanics is difficult to solve.  The more you read about these problems the more reasons for their difficulty become apparent, but the metaphor suggested itself to me because in the three-body problem of, say, calculating the orbits of three stars of roughly equal mass around each other, the co-interactions of the three bodies and their accompanying forces make pinning down precise and predictable velocities nearly impossible.  The movements of each of the three parts of the system effect the other two constantly, and the way that they are effected effects in turn the way they move, and so forth.  Chaos seems to reign.

The three parts to starting any story, I say, are trouble, setting, and character.  A story exists only when there is a identifiable character in some comprehensible place and time who encounters a difficulty of some kind and has to resolve it.

Unlike the example of three orbiting stars above, I think the three components of the start of a story are unequal in mass, that is they each play a different role in importance to the story itself.  

Character I think is the most important of the three, at least in almost any good story I can think of.  Trouble is the second most important, and the setting third.

This might seem counter intuitive at first, since almost never is this the order of appearance of information, or the order in which these three are ranked in terms of making it easy for us to picture what’s going on.

Setting is usually the first thing we need to know in order to get a clear picture of what’s going on, and until we have it at least partially settled, I think the reader’s mind is generally yearning for the missing information.  We can’t really fully visualize the action of a story until we have at least a partial sketch of the background,  and until then our minds aren’t really able to fully engage with what’s going on.  

So usually an oral storyteller, for instance, addressing a group of kids let’s say, will use setting as the opening exposition of a story, the first few sentences given while bottoms are settled on the carpet and the necessary coughs and clearing of throats, all preliminary to the paying of full attention beginning.

Setting plays such an important role in our believing in a story, and remembering it afterward, that there are almost a countless number of works that have exist by virtue of taking an existing, possibly well-known set of characters and their conflicts, and re-making them in a new setting as a new work.  

And setting goes so far towards influencing what we think of a story that this generally works; in our minds the works stand as separate, although really only setting and the odd particulars of delivery separates them.  The Magnificent Seven springs to mind as well-known example of this; a re-telling of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai that has been transplanted from feudal Japan to the old American west.  Other examples include Clueless and Jane Austen’s Emma, Apocalypse Now and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and (to a limited extent) The Lion King and Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Adaptations all, to be sure, but what is adapting a work if not changing the language and setting to fit the times?  A great deal of creativity and originality goes into the kind of work needed to make this translation work, and have the end product be as engaging and satisfying as the source material, but that doesn’t make setting-changing any less the main thing that’s being done.  And if the setting can change completely and not effect the story significantly at all, how important is it to the essence of what’s there?  And don’t get me started on remakes.  How many of these are set in the time the original story was told?

In the past I’ve described many (if not most) works of science fiction and fantasy as not essentially belonging to their respective genre, since the stories they have to tell is usually a story which could be easily translated into our present time or others.  The only thing about their wars, wanderers, bank heists, or break-ups is that they happen to be in space or in the future.  There’s very often nothing in the characters or the plot that sets the world of the story truly apart from our own.  

I feel like true science fiction has to have at least something to do with the strange, with something that we’re not able to easily deal with or explain away.  No matter what setting it’s in, the characters would be trying to frankly and believably integrate some strange new (or new to us) aspect of their lives brought on by a twist in technology, nature, society, or themselves.

Good stories can be made without an essential setting, make no mistake.  I’ve enjoyed many of the kind of stories described above, nominally set in space but capable of being acted out anywhere.  I’m just saying that what makes such stories good is generally either a plot or characters, or both, that could play equally well in any other setting you like.

For this reason, setting is to me is the least essential of the three elements in getting a narrative started.  If most stories can be translated from one setting to another and still retain whatever it is about them that makes them what they are, what we could call (if we wanted to be highfalutin) their essential characteristics, then setting must be the least essential part of what makes them themselves, so to speak.

But what about character, then?  Isn’t this contradictory?  If we take the case of adapting one story into another seriously, aren’t the characters being changed just as much as the setting?  And if they can be changed, how can they be as important to the story as the plot, and more important than the setting as you say above?

I think probably not, though the counter-point’s implications are interesting.  I’d like to go into the issue of adaptation and what parts of character survive the change, and whether this makes them essential to the story or not, but that will have to wait for another post, as for now we’re out of time.

From the Desk of Evil Dennis

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Desperation

"Feeling any better?" Ben asked.

Dan didn't look up from his laptop.  He was typing furiously.

"I'm on a deadline," he said.

Ben nodded and sipped his beer.

"So not much better, then," he said.

Dan shrugged without slowing his typing, then cursed, backspaced, and began again.

"At least this isn't overdue yet," he said.

Ben looked around the bar.  Dan continued typing.

"You're not working from notes?" asked Ben.

Dan made an un-uh sound.

"You always work from notes," said Ben.

"No time," said Dan.

"When did you start working on this?" asked Ben.

"This afternoon," said Dan.

"It's afternoon right now," said Ben, gesturing to the sunlight coming in the bar's front windows.

Dan moved his shoulders slightly as if about to shrug again, then reconsidered.

"I started right before you came in," he said.

Ben nodded slowly, making a face that mingled bafflement with mild admiration.  He finished his beer.  

A full glass sat in front of Dan, hidden from his view by the screen of the laptop.  Ben leaned forward casually and reached for it.

"That's mine," said Dan.  Ben sat back.

"So what's this thing you've got a deadline for?" asked Ben.

"The usual," said Dan.  "Short story for a freshman in 101 Comp."

"How come you're typing so fast if it's prose?" asked Ben.  Dan usually was a tortuously slow writer of fiction, he labored over precise descriptions endlessly.

"I'm cheating," said Dan, "it's almost all dialogue."

"Ugh," exclaimed Ben, as if suddenly realizing something.  "I hate meta-humor."

Dan didn't comment.  He kept typing.

Ben got up and got another beer.  There was almost no one at the bar, it was before even the afternoon commuters came in.

"So I'm working on this story," he said as he leaned back into his seat.

Dan made a um-hm sound without looking up.

"I think I need more research before I can pull it off," Ben said.

Dan said, "How so," without much conviction.

"I got the idea reading a book," said Ben, "nonfiction, about history.  And it put very clear ideas in my head, but all the information I could get from that book, the one that gave me the ideas, it was all sort of a summary.  I'm not sure I feel comfortable working from only one source."

"So read up," said Dan.  "If it interests you it'll take up time on its own."

"Maybe," said Ben.  "That's not really the problem."

He paused.  Dan continued typing.

"What's happening in your story now?" Ben asked.

"They're talking," said Dan.

"What about?" asked Ben.

"They're these two guys," said Dan (he was still typing as he spoke), "they're at the foot of this huge wall."

"Like the Great Wall of China?" asked Ben.

"Sure," said Dan, "but I think it's probably higher than that, since we're used to taller buildings now.  Anyway they started by debating over how they're going to climb up, and then they were debating over whether they needed to climb up at all."

"Are they still debating?" asked Ben.

"Yeah," said Dan, "but now they're trying to decide why the wall's even there in the first place."  His fingers continued to clatter away.

Ben nodded again and drank more beer.

"The real problem," he said, "with my story, is that I've got a very clear idea of the feeling of the story, of what I want it to mean."

"Um-hm," intoned Dan.

"It's pretty tidy, like a parable," said Ben.

"You hate those," said Dan.

"I don't hate parables," said Ben.  "I just don't like stories that probably started as little  lessons and then had stories put on them like clothes.  Stories that started as stories are better suited to my taste, they seem more like life."

"So how did this one start?" said Dan.  "As a little lesson or as a story?"

"I'm really not sure," said Ben.  "But I know that the reason the idea first came to me is because of this history book, or summary of history rather, and I'm a little intimidated by the idea of researching enough to 

"Why's that?" asked Dan.

"On the one hand," said Ben, "if I start reading more about this history and find out something that wrecks my idea of how the history really played out, then I wouldn't really feel like I could do the story properly."

"So what?" said Dan.

"So what not much," said Ben, "I'll give up the story and feel a little bummed."

"Couldn't you just change it enough that it fits the history and write it that way?" asked Dan.  

"Not really," said Ben.  "I don't know for sure, but I have a feeling it just woudn't be the same.  But I should probably try and do the reading and take a stab at adapting it before I jump to conclusions."

"You said on the one hand," said Dan, still typing, but with less pounding constancy.  "How does this go bad if you find out you're right?  About the history I mean."

"If what I read confirms my ideas," said Ben, "then suddenly it looks like I think I'm an expert, when really I just had an idea for a story, and I want the story to speak for itself, not be an expert thing or not."

"Oh boo-who," said Dan.  "People will think more of your story than you want them to."

"I don't think that's how that's spelled," said Ben.  "I think it's boo-hoo."

"Is it ever boo whom?" asked Dan.

"You've got a story to write," said Ben.  "Stop talking."

Dan slowed typing, pressed two buttons with a small flourish, and closed the laptop.  

"Ready for submission," he said cheerfully.  He picked up his beer and took a long gulp.

"No second draft?" asked Ben.

"It's supposed to be rough," said Dan.  "It's freshman comp."

"Fair enough," said Ben.

"What happens in your story," said Dan.

"It's a little controversial-ish," said Ben.

At this Dan winced and shook his head.

"Yeah I know, sorry," said Ben.  "Anyway these two guys wake up in a field, they're all alone, it's a sunny day.  They sit up and see each other, and at once they're both on the defensive.  They're dressed differently.  Anyway it turns out they were both on opposite sides of a huge battle, and they talk for a bit and they sort of realize that the last thing they both remember is getting wounded so badly that they couldn't have survived, and now they don't have any wounds at all.  So they're both awake and talking to each other, but they're both actually dead."

"What is it with you and the afterlife these days," said Dan.

"I always feel morbid in the springtime," said Ben.

"You've got an overdeveloped sense of irony," Dan said, and finished his beer.

"I'm not sure that's possible," said Ben.

"Be right back," said Dan, and he went to the bar.

"So do they become friends in the end?" he asked when he returned.

"No," said Ben.

"Mmm," said Dan.  "What happens?"

"One of them tries to kill the other one," said Ben.  "They have irreconcilable differences, not to mention some serious communication problems."

"Can they not speak the same language?" asked Dan.

"Language is no barrier," said Ben.  "Whether they could have done so or not, they each understand the other perfectly.  I'm not sure whether to have them comment on the fact."

"Meta-humor," said Dan.

"Not exactly, but yeah sort of," said Ben.

"So where's the controversy part?" asked Dan.  "Is it an unpopular war?"

"Not really," said Ben.  "They were both fighting in the crusades."

"Eesh," said Dan.

"Yeah," said Ben.  "The more I think about it, the less sure of myself I feel."

"I don't know enough about the crusades to comment," said Dan, "but weren't they fought in the middle east?"

"Mostly," said Ben, "I think."

"You should probably do more research," said Dan.  "Not that it's really a problem, that all happened hundreds of years ago."

"That's how I felt at first," said Ben.

"But people would probably think you're trying to say something about the world today," said Dan.

"And that's where I landed when I got stumped," said Ben.

"Are you trying to say something about today?" said Dan.

"Not really," said Ben.  "I'm definitely not trying to say something about today and dress it up like I'm saying it about the middle ages.  If I'm trying to say something at all, it's about how misunderstandings can sometimes be too complicated to explain, they can only be shown."

"Misunderstandings," said Dan.

"Did you ever read Solaris?" asked Ben.

Dan bobbed his head equivocally.  "Only once," he said.  "I feel like I need to read it again to really understand it."

"Funny you should say so," said Ben.  "Part of that book, to me anyway, is all about how two life forms can fundamentally fail to understand each other, no matter how sophisticated their attempts at communication are, no matter how carefully they go about trying to get their point across, both sides are just perfectly in the dark from beginning to end.  Because they're just too different to actually communicate at all."

"I think I got that," said Dan.  "Or didn't get it.  ...I think I successfully did what the author wanted me to do there. Probably."  He drank more beer.  Then he frowned.  "You're trying to set up two guys from the crusades as if they're too different to understand each other?"

"No," said Ben.  "It's actually sort of the opposite.  In Solaris the characters all know they're not getting it.  They're distraught and terrified and baffled and upset over everything the alien life form does to get their attention, but from first to last they know that their guesses at what it's trying to say are only that: guesses.  They never think they're getting anywhere, they know more or less what they don't know."

"And your guys?" said Dan.

"They think they understand each other," said Ben.  "That's the whole point.  They're enemies, they've been brought up to hate and fear each other and fight to the death.  And both side thinks they know how the other side ticks, and why they don't understand each other.  They think they've tried to understand each other, and failed.  But they haven't really tried at all, they've only looked for what they expected to find in each other, and found it, and acted accordingly."

Dan nodded slowly.  "A lot to get across," he said.

"Tell me about it," said Ben.

"But curious," said Dan.  "I'd like to read it."

"I think I really need more research," said Ben.

"Do you know your characters?" said Dan.

Ben considered.

"Yeah," he said.  "I think I know how they both think.  I definitely know how to talk like them at least."

"Why not do away with the history part altogether?" asked Dan.

"Do away with it," said Ben.

"Yeah," said Dan.  "Make them be from Jupiter and Saturn or something, and have them wake up on an asteroid in the year 5000."

"You want to talk about people not really seeing what the story's about," said Ben.

"Two kids on a playground," suggested Dan.

"That means they're dead kids," said Ben.

"Oh right," said Dan.  "Do they have to be dead?"

Ben half-nodded while drinking and set down his glass.  "It's important to what happens at the end."

"Maybe just do away with the holy war part," said Dan.  "It doesn't have to be two soldiers on either side of that particular conflict.  As long as it's not an American and a German in World War Two you're probably fine."

"No one sympathizes with the Nazis?" asked Ben.

"I think it would cloud the issue," said Dan.  "That seems like it's what you're trying to avoid."

"Maybe I'll try it," said Ben.  "The real main thing is that the view each character has of the other is of huge importance to him, in a bad way.  They have to have their concept of the enemy be almost as important as their concepts of themselves.  They hate each other like you hate hagfish."

"I do hate those things," said Dan with a shiver and a brief face of disgust.  

Then he looked thoughtful.  "You think a holy war is the only time that sort of thing can happen?"

"No," said Ben.  "Almost certainly not, but I'm no historian.  It was just the time period of the crusades that put the idea in my head.  Two sides that seem so similar, in some ways, but that just didn't seem to understand the other side at all, no matter how well they thought they did.  It's like a double tragedy sort of."

"Sort of," said Dan.  "I don't really know anything about that period of history, except it seemed like starting those wars was a bad idea on the part of the pope, but it lead to a lot of cultural exchange?"

"History's not my strong suit," said Ben.  "That's kind of why I wanted to read this book in the first place."

"Sort of a summary book, though, you said," said Dan.

"Well, it was a place to start," said Ben.

"Fair enough," said Dan.

"But I've got plenty of time to figure it out," said Ben.  "I really wouldn't mind doing the research."

"Nothing wrong with tweaking the story if you find something that doesn't gel," said Dan.

"I already said I don't like twisitng the story to fit some point or lesson," said Ben.

Dan shrugged.

"So what did your characters decide about the wall?" asked Ben.

"They gave up and went home," said Dan.  "They figured that it was just the two of them, and they realized that even if they got over they weren't sure they could get back again."


Ben closed one eye in apparently thought.  "Nothing ventured?" he said.  "As a good thing?"

"I think it was supposed to be about the futility of all action?" said Dan.

"It's definitely Comp-101 caliber," said Ben.

"Gee thanks," said Dan.

"Well," said Ben, "I wouldn't normally be so fulsome, but I know how much time you put into it."

"At least it's done," said Dan.

"Cheers," said Ben, and emptied his glass.

On Rules

Photo by Alexander Kluge
image courtesy of unsplash.com

The first and most helpful thing I realized about writing is that there are no rules.  Anything goes.

So much time is spend during one’s formal education, or at least during mine, memorizing rules for composition, particularly essay and short-answer composition, that when it comes to creative writing one can easily find one’s self at a loss of how to begin.

But the most important thing to realize is that when it comes to creative writing it is impossible to do wrong.  You can do anything you want with words, absolutely anything; learn them, create them, try to destroy them (it’s difficult), shape them in your image, build castles, airships, wars and peace treaties, picnics and predicaments with them.  You can invent an entirely new system of symbolic logic derived from the order in which frogs jump into a pond when you approach, or you can sit and copy word for word the entirety of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from a paperback copy into a spiral bound notebook.  No one’s going to stop you.  Surprisingly few people will even try.  The only thing that matters is that you write something down.

Never, never worry that what you’re writing isn’t good enough or smart enough or original enough.  There are no standards, no one is watching, no one is judging what you’re doing.  You can ask people to read your stuff, if you like it enough to want to share it, but that’s later on.  For now, ignore everything you think you know about writing and just start putting down words.  See where it takes you.

Over time, I think, most people tend towards consistently writing about certain things, or at least writing what they write in certain ways.  Does this reflect something about them as people, or as artists?  Maybe, but I suspect it reflects something about some people and doesn’t on others.  But sooner or later rules about what’s easy to write, or what’s interesting, or what’s rewarding, start to suggest themselves all on their own.

Ignore this, unless it’s useful to you.  Don’t let any simulacra into your sandbox, it’s your sandbox, you get to do what you want.  Always, always remember that there are no rules.

But what if I want to get published one day?

Well of course.  And the worst part is probably that most of the important rules are secret, or very hard to find out, and even harder to follow.

Surely there are plenty of rules involved in making that happen.  But those are a far way up in the air and a long way off.  For now I’ll confine myself to worrying just about writing effectively, rather than writing with any other goal in mind, and writing just one particular kind of thing.

I’m no poet.  I like stories.  I enjoy reading some poetry, but in the end some, or most, is either baffling or sterile.  I understand with my brain that poems do things that stories can’t do, or maybe that they do those things more efficiently, that is, using fewer words.  It’s probably a matter of exposure; I’ve read many, many times more stories than I have poems, maybe because for most of my life more stories were easily available to me.

But for better or for worse, I like writing best of almost all things worth doing, and of all kinds of writing I like storytelling.  I haven’t written as much as a more dedicated person might have by this point in my life, and I’ve never published anything (unless blogs count -- the electronic world has become so fluid in the last ten years that I’m honestly not sure at this point what publishing even really means).

So, are there rules for storytelling?

Again, I have to insist that there are no rules in writing.  But once we start considering telling a story, and what’s worse trying to tell that story well, shadows and suggestions of conduct and convention start to impose themselves.  Some are useful, some are not.

Surely there are informal rules about writing and reading that everybody who reads or writes understands reasonably well, whether they realize they understand them or not.

The writer, for instance, depends on knowing a certain number of words in common with the reader in order to be understood.  The reader, at least usually, depends on the writer to make clear what it is they’re trying to get across (or, if they’re trying to convey something that is unclear, to at least convey their chaos in a way that it can be aware of it as such).  Both parties want some meaning in the written words to be conveyed from one to the other, and both parties (usually) want the time they invest in the piece to be recompensed by that meaning, or something like it.

All that’s a lot of noise.  Being an English speaker, when I pick up a book written in English, I expect to be able to understand what the person is writing about, and maybe even why they thought the book was worth writing in the first place.

But when it comes to creative writing, and for me writing fiction in particular, what are the rules, if any?  What is storytelling, why do people engage in it, and what separates good stories from bad?

In some ways these questions are what this blog has been about.  Exploring what I consider to be the key rules about telling stories, and trying to figure out if they have reasons for existing, and what those reasons might be.

I think I can describe personal style as what rules in writing a person feels are effective and rewarding, and their reasons for when and how they’re applied.

Why did I call it ‘This Problem’s Unsolvable?’

There are two reasons.  One is anecdotal and arbitrary, and might be worth another post sometime.  The other is supposed to represent some bigger idea, and that idea has to do with exploring those rules.

Happy Spring!

Time to Draw Comics

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Unfolding

Photo by Kien Do
image courtesy of unsplash.com

I had a dream that I was tiny.  I don’t remember how I knew it, but to me a fingernail would be as wide and tall as the broad side of a barn.  I was floating or sinking down in something dim and red, and there was a shape coming up towards me, and it was me.

“Hello,” said a woman who was standing near my head.  As I got close I saw she was about my size.  She was near my cheek, which curved up in the dim light like some unrestrained piece of sculpture, a peach the size of a skyscraper.  “My name is Pauline,” the woman said.  I said hello.

We entered through my outer incisor.  Pauline pulled a catch on a small door that swiveled open in the big white wall, which from this close looked like it was made of white tiles, like a bathroom wall, or the space shuttle.  Inside it was dark and very hot; I wanted to go back out, but Pauline took my arm and we floated went further in.

“Can I see my visual cortex?” I said, trying to muster some enthusiasm for the project in a smalltalk sort of way.

“Follow me,” Pauline said, but when we hit the bloodstream through the clotted root of the tooth I sensed that we went down, and not up.  I wondered what tiny I could do that the big I would feel.  I expected to see red blood cells floating by like jelly donut shaped cars in a classroom video, but it was mostly just a wide space.  We moved quickly, and it was hard to make anything out; I tried to count the turns, but quickly got lost.  Pauline had let go of my arm, but I stayed close.

“Where are we going?” I asked, beginning to feel bored.

“Here,” Pauline said, and we went through the wall.  It gapped like a huge red wicker wall of licorice and tucked itself together behind.  We were in a big white room with walls that looked like the underbellies of a thousand octopuses wrestling on all sides.

The walls were heaving in and out on all sides, and there was something in the middle of them; a dark grey pearl, or maybe a round steel ball.  It was moving this way and that, pushed around by the ball.

“What is this?” I said, feeling revolted.

“This says what you want,” Pauline said serenely.  I didn’t understand what she meant.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“This is not a journey of discovery,” she said, and we sank into the writhing white folds.  I held by breath before we went through, but it wasn’t bad, they felt like very smooth blankets, and a moment later we were on the other side an moving again.

We weren’t in a blood vessel this time, we were moving through what I thought might be a nerve, but I’m not sure.  It’s hard to remember, I think we might have been beams of light.  We were moving faster than ever, and I couldn’t see anything but rainbow edges around things.  I remember feeling disappointed that this wasn’t at the end of the dream; it seems like being a beam of light should be the last thing.

We came out in a huge space, wide and wide and round.  I could just get a sense that the ruddy wall we were floating near curved inwards way above our heads and way below.  There was a light shining from somewhere but I couldn’t make it out.

The light was making a shape in the air above my head, but I couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be.  The air seemed to be in motion and the shape in the light just wouldn’t take to itself.  I thought I saw if for a second, it looked like a curved double scratch like a simple drawing of a wave, or of a bird turned upside down.  But that wasn’t really it, because I was only seeing it from the side.

“This is your light,” Pauline said.

“How do we get over there?” I asked, gesturing towards where the light came from.  I was thinking if I got closer to the source I could see the shape.

“This is not a journey of wisdom,” Pauline said.

“Huh?” I said.

We moved on.

I think we were in the bone, or rather that we had become part of it.  I felt like a splinter, glued in among a thousand other splinters.  One piece of sand, melted with a million others into the long bend of a single shape.  But we were still moving.  We moved with the rate of growth, but it seemed to take years.

I slowly moved through a hundred different shapes, as conscious of them as a plant is of the sun.  Plants don’t have nerves, do they?  But they’ve got something in them that reaches for the sun.  Does that something feel like anything?  Maybe we wouldn’t be able to feel it, nerve endings are so much louder.  But it has to feel like something, right?  What about a stone?

The shapes flowed through me and I was them, but then they passed on.  I felt what made me think of me moving away.  I didn’t like it.  I didn’t know where Pauline was, I assumed she was embedded in the bones somewhere above me, but she didn’t say anything.

The world dwindled around us, everything was getting smaller and smaller.  At last we separated from the shapes, like pop-up figures cut out of the dim paper in the dark.  We were standing on some last invisible surface, looking down at one tiny little constellation, barely a handful of little shapes, ringing off one another in the dark.

“These are words,” said Pauline.

I nodded thoughtfully like I knew what she meant.

After a minute I got an idea, looking at the little bones. 

“How can I make them better?” I asked her.

But the idea flew away, and I wrote this story to try and remember what that idea was, and it didn’t come back.  It hasn’t landed.

So, “This is not a journey of transformation,” Pauline said.

“What’s it for, then?” I said.

I woke up.

On the Break, and Changes

Photo by Wayne Bishop
image courtesy of unsplash.com

Welcome back!  Thank you for the patience while the blog underwent some much needed maintenance.

The break was also supposed to be a chance for me, among other things, to build up a cache of new material and free me from a cycle of same-day composition I’d fallen into since the holidays.  While I did manage to plot out the next month or so of essays (those seem to write themselves if I just give it time), stories and comics were less forthcoming than I’d liked.  It’s a well-documented claim on this blog that ideas cannot be forced.  I didn’t try to force any ideas into being, I tried to rest and be patient for them to turn up, and while some did, they were not in the numbers or of the quality that I had hoped for.  Instead of working eagerly and producing a month’s worth of material or more in a few weeks, I have three or four half-ideas and a larger project that I may or may not ever have time to start, much less finish.  Encouraging, and far from “I have no ideas and am barely posting this on time,” but again, not as prolific on the ground as my dreams had been while still in the air.

But this really just nudged at a bigger issue, hitherto unaddressed, or not addressed directly, which both caused the break to happen and made it difficult to put the break to the best purpose I could.  That issue is the general topic of this return post.

This is supposed to be a blog about storytelling, a big part of which for me is writing, and I’m always a little wary about trying to write blog posts about writing blog posts, because they’re already supposed to be about writing.  But apparently the way forward for us  on this journey of unsolvable problems leads next directly through just such a thorn patch, so bear with me while I try to write about writing about writing, and then we can move on.

One of the tricky things about being me, apparently, is that I have an unusual capacity for getting bored.  Everyone can get bored with doing nothing; you get stuck in a waiting room, or at a bus stop, and you wish you were somewhere or anywhere else, you wish there was something to do.  Pocket computers have probably made this less of a thing now for most of us, we have our people and programs with us wherever we are, but I’m sure we all know what it’s like to get bored because there’s nothing interesting going on.

In addition to this ordinary sort of boredom, I have the additional ability, nay talent, to get bored with things that do interest me, if I pursue them long enough.  I get going on a project, I get about halfway done, or more than halfway, and suddenly all my interest deserts me.  Going back to that project, instead of doing something else, or ANYTHING else, feels a little like going to prison.

Even if the thing I get bored with is something I really enjoy doing.  When this happens, one feels incredibly lame.  I like doing this stuff, but suddenly I’d rather not be doing it, please for the name of all that’s sacred don’t make me do it more.  What’s the deal?

It’s probably something everyone who tries to work creatively struggles with, come to think of it; I haven’t read into the matter extensively.  

It’s not exactly writer’s block.  To me writer’s block feels more like you’ve got something to get out of you, something to say, but can’t find out what it is.  

When this sort of boredom strikes, there are still ideas there, if I have the moxie to go out and bring them down to earth.  The trouble is that the moxie goes somewhere, I don’t know where.

It’s not really anhedonia, I don’t think.  Anhedonia is basically when things that used to make you happy or bring you pleasure don’t do that for you anymore.  It’s generally seen as a symptom of acute or chronic depression, and I imagine it’s pretty lousy.  It certainly could be anhedonia that I’m experiencing, I wouldn’t really have a frame of reference to tell if apart from anything else, but for two reasons I doubt it.

First, the boredom generally goes away if I start doing the same kind of thing, say writing, or drawing, or reading, but I do it with a different set of content than what I’ve gotten bored with.  I’m working on a drawing, or a series of drawings, and I lose interest.  But I think about another idea and try that out, and I generally feel interested again, if it’s different enough.

Second, and I am obviously not an expert on psychology or of psychological terms, but the weird thing about this brand of boredom is that I basically catch it sooner or later no matter what I do.  Every project, every scheme of mine, which takes more than a day, a week (a month and a half seems to be the upper limit so far) to carry out sooner or later suffers the same death by attrition of energy.

This blog, when I started it, was supposed to be (among other things) an exercise in resisting the boredom for as long as possible.  No matter what, if I’m to be a professional and to maintain my integrity as a writer, posts must continue to go up on time.  And for longer than I’d expected I managed to keep it up.  I’ve succeeded at creating new habits before (positive ones I mean, like keeping a daily journal and shaving regularly), and I hoped to make this blog one of them, and had better success than none.

Yet when it started I had a few weeks ready, and by the time October rolled around I was creating stuff only a few days in advance, in November I started posting next-day (that was for NaNo, and its effect on the blog is a whole ‘nother post).  And then December and all that comes with it hit like a glittering golden ball of happiness and  doom, and in early January I took a break.  I’ve been struggling to recover my moxie, to bully myself back into my work chair to churn out some advance material, ever since.

Where was I going wrong?  Whence this apathy for projects which clearly are very important to me?

This puzzled me for a number of days.  I was eager to, once and for all, pin down a cause for this listlessness and un-enthusiasm, thinking basically that if I could find a way to cure it, I could do anything.  I would be unstoppable!  Or at least I could maintain my enthusiasm for projects for long enough to get them finished, instead of walking away every time.  In retrospect, this hope seemed as optimistic, and about as practical, as thinking I could learn to levitate by finding out the source of gravity and curing that, too.

As with almost all things, when I determined an answer, I realized it wasn’t what I wanted to hear, and what’s worse, that it was probably workable, but not in a way that can be conveniently or speedily done.

Why do I start projects in the first place?  How do I feel when I start them, when the ideas are rushing, and the hours fly by, and there doesn’t seem to be enough time to stop working on them and do anything else?  Well, it feels like what I just said.  It is an all-absorbing level of interest.  I am unable to stop myself from thinking of the project, even when I’m not working on it.  In other words, when I get going with a new project, I’m a little bit obsessed.

The problem with relying on obsession for your source of energy is that it can’t last.  That level of dedication isn’t powered by keeping to a set schedule, or by looking ahead to the long-term effects of keeping up a pace of activity best described as “frenzy,” or, critically, by interest in getting the project done.  It’s not a results-based 

And it’s awesome.  The only real problem with it is that it doesn’t last.  If you rely only on obsessive energy in order to get things done, you will forever be at the mercy of whatever part of your brain decides what you’re obsessed with at the moment, and if you’re trying to make long-term results happen, you’ll find that that almost never changes on a schedule that’s convenient for you.

So the answer is to pace myself.

Instead of relying on not being bored to get it done, I will give as much voluntary will to the project as I can.  My focus will change to seeking a balance between this and other projects.  Most of all  I have to look for a sense of habit and consistency in getting the work done and well done, without either feeling like this is the only thing that matters, or that because it doesn’t interest one thousand percent of my brain it’s not worth doing.

Long post short, too late, starting this week This Problem’s Unsolvable will have three posts a week and not five, either until three posts proves to be the pace that works best, or until it seems clear that more or fewer posts are needed to do the job right.  One essay, focusing on being clear and concise, one comic, one story.

Of course if I get more ideas or something comes up that deserves extra attention I’m at liberty to do extra work as well.  The important thing is just showing up.

As usual, thanks for reading.  I’m looking forward to finding out how things will go for this project, and I appreciate your showing up to take the journey with me.

What’s next?

Upkeep

original photo by Daria Nepriakhina

image courtesy of unsplash.com