The Why
In the afterword of Stephen King's short story collection Skeleton Crew, when he's describing how he came up with "The Mist", he describes inspiration as a bird that craps on his head. Phillip K. Dick's V.A.L.I.S is about a Soviet satellite/alien force/god that beams cosmic knowledge into a random guy's head. For myself, inspiration is something between the two of these. Except, if I was to come up with a metaphor, it would be more like a zombie that's shaking me by the throat and vomiting all its insides straight into my mouth. At night, it becomes a witch sitting my chest while I'm trying to sleep, whispering into my ear.
I think a lot about why I want to do this. Part of it is certainly because it's kind of fun. Another part is that both good and bad stories fire me up to get to work, because the good ones show me that it can be done, and because I want to outdo the bad ones. But the biggest thing is that the things in my head want out, and I'm obliged to let them. These worlds and those who inhabit them are always clawing at the inside of my head, demanding to escape and wreak havoc. These thoughts are like the larvae of a parasitic wasp planted by some spirit or other, chewing their way outside my skull.
So then, the most important reason I write is to get these things out of my head and onto a page. This is even more important than being read. In fact, even if no one ever reads any of this, I'll still feel so much better than if I just keep it in my head. It'll just be a great weight off my shoulders. I start to feel kind of awful if I don't write. I can skip out on any other project and it'll feel a bit disappointing, but when I don't write my head just feels sick. Some people write because it's fun, or because they need to express themselves, but I write so that I don't implode. I'm not exactly expecting to go professional with this stuff. I don't really know if I'm a good enough writer to make a living off of it, at least not for a long time. I don't have many great ideas for a career, so I'm going into what my parents want me to, just so I'm doing something. The only problem I see is that it might get in the way of my writing and all my other projects. Because if I'm busy now, it's only going to get worse. So I better get as many licks in now as I can.
Put another way: The stuff I have in my head is so cool (at least I think so) that it would be a crime to keep it all inside. For the most efficient expulsion of information, I need to poke as many holes in the dam of my mind as possible. The many outlets, this site, writing, the encyclopedia, they're all to let as much out as possible. Though I tend to overwhelm myself with it all. It seems highly unlikely, but I hope at least one of these things will get me at least kind of noticed. I don't think I'll ever get famous, but I'm hoping I can at least get some people to care. Otherwise, this'll all float through the digital void for however long the human race exists.
So that's one half of it. The other is that when I'm writing or coding or drawing or etc., I feel at peace. There's no way to mess any of those things up. I mean, I can write a bad story, but at the end of the day, who cares? It's not like with everything else, when it seems like my worth is tied to doing things perfectly. This time last year, the feelings of inadequacy were a lot worse. They were so bad, I couldn't even do any of the afforementioned things. It was about three months or so of drowning in self hatred. At some point, I realized, on a practical level, that this sort of attitude wasn't going to get me anywhere. If my worth was tied to doing things right, there was no way I would ever do anything right if I was always angry at myself, and by extension, everyone and everything else. Once that got through my thick head, things got better almost over night.
Those thoughts float to the surface every once in a while (usually when I sleep poorly) but they're almost all gone now, and that's the only reason I've been able to keep up with all my goals as well as I have been, even though I'm not always entirely on point. I just can't let the bad days take over.
Here's what I think I need to improve with my writing. First, it's all way too darn long. I pretty much need to focus up more when I write, to get better at getting to the point. I haven't planned out any of the stories I've written this year before writing them, and I think fully fleshing them out in the future might help. I also write very slow. On a good day, I can get maybe four hundred words in an hour. This may be because I get distracted a lot, and also that I often go back through what I write to make changes. Unfortunately, I'm at a loss for how to solve the first problem. To combat the second, I just have a second doc with notes that I pop open to enter a change into whenever I feel like going back. It works, I just don't know how the hell it took me so long to figure that out.
Everyone has different advice on how to write. I don't think any of it's wrong, but I've started to ignore all but the most general of advice. Once you get specific about things, you get to preference. Some people prefer to write long, flowy sentences, and others prefer punchy and quick stuff. Some people get bored by long and flowy sentences, others prefer their books to have some more long and flowy sentences, and so it goes. You just can't please everyone. So you should focus on at least pleasing yourself. This being said, I think some things can be noted as being objectively bad (mostly story structure, character development, etc) so when I edit I'll focus on things like that.
There isn't much left to say. I'll just keep on chugging through as many short stories as I can before the year ends. After my editing, I might have a respectable little group to be entered into competitions or something. The one I'm working on right now is about a family of aliens who goes to visit a zoo, only for the most exotic exhibit to be under maintenance because the "animals" are being photographed on account of them being the last two members of their species. That's all I'll say for now. I think I'm maybe 25 percent done with it. It's very short, like I mentioned in an earlier entry.
I've slipped with my upload schedule, just like I expected myself to. I spent half of yesterday running errands and the other half sort of goofing around and working on homework. I finish a whole animated button for the site, then realized I had a better idea for a button and scrapped it. I wanted to work on that today but I didn't know we were taking a miniature trip because of labor day, so I haven't really done anything besides work on this. I'll be hanging out with friends all day tomorrow, so I don't know if I'll have time then. I think I'll at least post the reading list thing. Other than that, I don't think there are any updates.
In conclusion, my only two obstacles to sticking to the upload schedule are poor time management and poor sleep. I'm so tired all the time that sometimes I can't lift a finger to do anything besides scroll shorts. Once I figure those things out, oh boy. There will not be a >div<, any writer's or artist's block, or anything else that won't bow to my will.
I'm gonna go write now.
Later,
