Category: Reflection

Reflection: A great story waits in everybody

DirtySciFiBuddha18 Comments

A great story waits in everybody.  Do you remember when as a kid, you and your friends would babble endlessly about magic realms, play soldier, play superhero, and throw in every cool thing from the most recent movie or show that caught your imagination?  It was completely without agenda, without self-consciousness, without motive other than to revel in wonder and the grace of an engaging story.  And it was amazing.

Working with the premise that our life experiences are not random, witless stretches of chaos and suffering, I’d venture to say that we grow up for a reason.  We go through hardship and adversity for a reason.  And even though it may not be pleasant or immediately gratifying, we are forced as adults to gravitate toward a more structured and precise form of storytelling for a reason (There are exceptions:  e.g the brilliantly insane comic Axe Cop).

So as I endlessly pick at my stories, disciplining myself to edit and draft a bit each day (and kicking myself when a new level of awareness about constructing prose opens up because then I have to go back and edit everything I thought was perfect just a day before) I realize that with the loss of childhood innocence a new opportunity opens:  The chance to grow awareness.

Would I like to go back to those younger days when it was enough to dream about a story that combined Batman, Jedi Knights and Tyrannosaurus Rex all in one and act it out with sticks for swords and blankets for capes?  Absolutely.  And I still do in a fashion; every time me and my buddies get together we amuse ourselves by mixing our real life into obscene and awesome hypotheticals.  Shooting the shit with your friends is storytelling in its rawest and purest form.

But that doesn’t translate well to a massive audience.  It’s like music:  Construct a MIDI or plunk out a melody one note at a time and your friends will appreciate it, but will it draw in the masses?  Will it give those deep, soul-stirring inspirations that change or invigorate minds on a scale of millions or billions of people?

As a writer, I know that in order to that level I need to constantly put myself under the microscope:  Edit, edit, edit.  (For an artist design, design, design)  Look at other peoples’ stuff and see what works and what doesn’t.  Understand the deeper mechanics of it, and if I don’t get it, then take an educated guess and experiment.  Constantly investigate and apply.  As the divisive but undeniable David Choe (highest paid grafitti artist in the world) says:  “Inspiration is for amateurs.  A real artist forces themselves to create whether they are inspired or not.”  A harsh quote, and easy to take the wrong way, but there is real truth to it.  There are mechanics and fundamentals that, when better understood, can manifest timeless core stories into brilliant and dazzling relevance for us today.  And whether I feel like it or not, I have to work on refining awareness of them.

So I think that with the acceptance that we must work, with the acceptance that our experiences have purpose and that we must learn and grow from them, we can take those MIDIs, those one-note-at-a-time melodies, and transform them into amazing backbeats that tempt our bones to dance; pure strains on an electric guitar that put a goofy grin on your face and cause you to involuntarily bob your head; orchestral symphonies that are so amazing you forget to breathe.

I don’t think that we are excluded from going back to being kids and telling those sweet, simple stories, but I think that if that’s all we do we’re selling ourselves short.  With discipline and open-minded acceptance of the things we need to experience, we can go back to the garden and stay there while still enjoying the taste of apples.  It’s not a mutually exclusive deal.  That being said, I gotta go back to work; the story is unfinished.

Anyways, thanks for reading!  To all you writers, I wish you inspired drafting and insightful editing!

Reflection: Why Write?

DirtySciFiBuddha13 Comments

Introspection: Why write? (the primary reason I mean) Possible answers: Money/recognition, self-validation, love/addiction, power/freedom, to create a masterpiece, or…I’ll get to the last one in a bit. It’s a bit meta (sorry if you’re not into that). So starting with money/recognition-not up to the writer. People may buy my work…or not. People may give me kudos…or not. It may happen after death. It may be that my work is lauded during life and panned afterwards. It’s happened in other art too, not just writing.

Self-validation: That IS up to me, but not dependent on what I write. I can choose to be validated by it or not. ANY accomplishment or work can be validating…or not. You can always find some mistake to pick at, or you can just enjoy having done the work. Contentment and self-validation are internal choices.

Love/addiction-it is entirely possible to write sheerly for either of these, but then I would have to be prepared to make no compromises, to do it sheerly out of MY love/addiction to it. I would have to make sure that I was ready to be my only reader, because my love of the story as I saw it was so strong I would be unwilling to make changes to accommodate others.

Power/Freedom-Not sure how many of you have experienced inaction due to lack of regimentation, but I sure have. Writing is like being able to build a house with infinite resources coupled with the ability to weaken the laws of physics. No boss, no budget, and you can create unstable structures that stand up in the world you’ve created but would collapse in the physical realm. With all that power, all that freedom, who WOULDN’T be tempted to create a beautiful, unstable mess; a hodgepodge of ideas, emotions, and desires splattered onto a page like the painting I did in kindergarten? There is nothing wrong with this-but with an unwillingness to consider reward other than a feeling of power/freedom, I need to be ready to be my only audience. So power/freedom can actually cause the work to suffer or not manifest at all, similar to paralysis by analysis.

Creating a masterpiece-a subjective endeavor. How many of you read great pieces of literature in high school or college that abysmally failed to compare with your favorite movie or story? I can personally say I don’t really like reading Shakespeare or Tolkein. (Sorry if I blaspheme) Depending on the culture and times, it may be a masterpiece or it may not. BUT, here is where I see a clue.

A “masterpiece” is created when a writer manifests a work that is recognizable as having eternal truths impeccably woven into it. It must also resonate with the reader IMHO, so that those truths ring clear to an interested and receptive mind. So depending on your audience, whether it be high school, elderly, white, black, male, female, whomever, they may say it’s a masterpiece or not. Now a writer must be able to “shift identity” to write from different perspectives, right? So a REALLY versatile writer will be able to “shift identity” to connect with ANY audience, being able to create a “masterpiece” for whomever, whenever, wherever.

Here’s where the good part is: This ability to “shift identity,” to see eternal truths from multiple perspectives and events, to be able to have a clarity of perception so strong that you can create “masterpieces” on demand, THAT to me is why I write. I want THAT. It doesn’t take a genius to go from that to deeper mystical principles like being able to simultaneously see the connections and diversity of existence so that your writing can illustrate interconnectedness in diverse ways to diverse audiences, but I don’t want to go into spirituality. That’s a whole ‘nother can of worms. With this skill anyways, I feel other writing concerns would naturally fall into place.

That was a super long rant.  Sorry. I also realize that the truth of it is that we all write because of a mix of these reasons, but at the same time I think most of us are driven by one in particular over the others.  Anyway, what primarily motivates you guys to write?  Thanks for reading!  I wish you inspired drafting and insightful editing.

Reflection: On Originality

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What is originality? Two things for certain:
1. A concept that is hard to define.
2. A concept that will incense writers/artists into trying to define it.
How many have you heard this story: A common person finds out he/she is exceptional and changes the world for the better. I just described Star Wars, The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Insurgent, The Matrix, even Jesus. From a writing perspective, we have all heard that “every story has been told before” but does that mean that we should simply copy other stories and tweak them a bit? I don’t think so. To gain artistic functionality from that statement, I believe we should explore its technicalities.

We all share similarities as humans. Our brains are similar, our needs are similar, and our physical limitations (e.g: inability to fly or breathe underwater) are similar. So when writing, in order to reach a wide audience, we need to make our writing relatable, by playing on our similarities. There are CORE TRUTHS that we all instinctively respond to. No brainer, right? That’s why so many stories share similar structures or basic themes. By weaving structure and theme into our stories, we pay respect to our audience by making the story relatable/resonant, and they pay respect to us as writers by reading/purchasing our material.

So where does breaking new ground and originality fit in? There are two ways that I can think of. The first is to weave core truths around a relevant setting. By relevant I mean timely and applicable. In my lifetime, I have seen blurring lines between government and big business, the viralization of information and production through the internet, and a growing awareness that moral absolutism won’t yield results; that to be successful somebody needs to be able to perceive minutiae and rapidly adjust to it, applying specificity and not just sweeping ideals that make for a good soundbite. Using timely themes to illustrate core truths will give your story extra relevance, extra punch.

The second way is to stretch the general public’s acceptable range for style and format. I’ll explain: Who from the Middle Ages would be able to comprehend and be entertained by the slow motion, the closeups, the extreme camera angles of today’s movies? I’d say not many. When early movies were shown of a train heading towards the camera the audience was deeply frightened, believing they were going to get hit by it. However, as time progressed, filmmakers threw in innovation after innovation, stretching the boundaries of style, creating the stylized movies we have today. The caveat is that if stretching style is the only concern of the artist, then the work becomes an incomprehensible, ego-stroking mess that only serves as a soapbox for the artist to say “Look how brave I am. This is ART!” When originality takes the form of pushing format and style, it must serve the work’s themes and core truths, otherwise it becomes a masturbatory, self-indulgent mess.

A bit strong I realize, but I tend to be that way in my contemplations. What do you guys define originality as? Anyways, thanks for listening to my ramblings. I wish you all inspired drafting and insightful editing!

Reflection: Echo Release Schedule and Serialization

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Writers, how many of you have been frustrated by how long it will take to release your book?  Solution:  Serialization, or the release of partial segments of material.  Problem:  You better know EXACTLY how the story plays out for the foreseeable future, because you don’t have the opportunity to go back and revise a segment you’ve already released.  My solution:  Before releasing anything, have at least 100 pages (or 30,000 words) of follow-on material drafted in advance.  That way, you have a fairly good idea of what happens in the future of your story and can revise your releasable material accordingly.  Okay, not a perfect solution, but it IS a way to mitigate some of the risk while at the same time not having to punch out a full 100,000-something word manuscript before anybody reads it.  Hopefully, that tactic may prove helpful to some of you.

That being said, I’ve been posting a weekly word count for Echo, but no indication of when Chapter 1 will be available as a free sample.  Since Chapter 1 is roughly 4000 words, I will punch my draft out to 34,000 words total, scrub up the chapter a little, then post it on dirtyscifibuddha.com  I’m writing this for myself as much as for you guys, since having no boss enables me to procrastinate.  Articulating my plans and rationale through these posts helps to impose structure on my routine.  I wish you guys inspired drafting and insightful editing!