That steady march of time is both reassuring and frustrating, I'd say. Years do, indeed, end and sometimes it's a good riddance. The past two years--since March 2020--have been a pretty low-point for me. There are global reasons for that, which most everyone knows and understands, as well as personal reasons. (If you weren't aware of my wife's battle with cancer, you can read my thoughts on it here.) The ending of 2021 has not been any easier, as familial strife has riven the peace.
Not only that, but my personal goal of writing at least half a million words annually continued its meteoric descent into the ground. With my recent obsession of painting miniatures, making (and playing) board games, and occasionally reading something that I'm supposed to, I have purposefully pulled myself away from writing. For a while there, I would sit in the loft of my kids' parkour gym and write for an hour in one of my notebooks while they learned how to do cartwheels and freak out about doing backflips. Lately, however, the errands and responsibilities of being a chauffer dad eroded those chances. Then there's been sickness in the family that prevented us from going to practice, so that hour of writing time evaporated. Of course, I could have found more times to write. I just…didn't care. I don't know that I'll ever 100% stop writing, but I'm definitely burning out on the desire. It's hard to say this "aloud", since all I've ever wanted to do, for as long as I can remember, is to write books. Like years, dreams eventually end. We have to wake up and face the realities of the day. And so I guess I'm finally waking up to this reality: I don't have it in me to be a writer. My skin's too thin, resolve's too weak, my desire's too tepid…whatever it might be, I guess this is my way of tapping out. I'm hoping that by trying to convince myself that I no longer have a goal of being a writer, of somehow providing for my family's needs via the written word, I will be able to rekindle an interest in writing. This is something that I tried to teach my students when I was a creative writing teacher: You have to understand what your goal really is as a writer. Is it to write? Is it to world build? Is it to edit and tidy up and fix broken parts? Is it to invent something new? Is it to share stories with friends and families and maybe some randos on the internet? Is it to simply say, "I wrote a book"? Is it to get a book out somehow, regardless of how? Is it to have your book sitting on the shelf, surrounded by your alphabetical peers? There are lots of different ways of being a writer, and all of them are equally valid. For me, I wanted that last one: I wanted to be a traditionally published author. That was my goal, that was my plan. And, like it has done for so many millions of others--billions of others, perhaps--COVID has taken that from me. Not only are my chances of finding an agent and getting the book sold diminishing daily (not even counting the fact that I haven't sent out a query in over a year), but the market is getting more crowded while readers are thinner on the ground than ever before. (According to a 2019 finding, almost an entire quarter of the adult population of the United States doesn't even read one book annually.) And while there's plenty of nuance to sus out about that issue, the main point is that the competition for books is harsher than it's ever been. And of all the words I can use to describe myself, "competitive" isn't one of them. I'm not interested in besting others. So there isn't a really strong drive to try to get myself into a position where I could achieve what I'm after. It's been really rough on me as I've been fiddling with this problem. I tried NaNoWriMo this past year and gave up halfway through the month. The vivid colors of writing have faded, as it were, and I couldn't find the emotional and mental energy I needed to put my butt in the chair and fingers on the keyboard for it anymore. Part of that was my own lack of passion. The last time I was really excited by one of my own stories was 2018. That's almost four years in the past now; that's a long time to not be truly motivated by a desire to tell stories. You can't draw from a well that's dry, after all. I've stumbled along for the past few years, hoping that it was just a rough patch or a phase or some other issue. Then COVID hit and my life crumbled at the edges; then the breast cancer arrived and fractured my life at the core. Raising a teenager, trying to convince myself that I still love teaching, battling my own depression, watching my wife struggle in ways that I can't help with…it all took its toll on my creative acuity and the once-sharp blade of storytelling desire dulled. I don't know what could possibly whet it, either. I feel a touch of remorse at this, as if I'm letting someone down by saying, "I'm done." Does it undo all of what I've taught students over the years? Am I now a hypocrite for thinking that I don't want to keep pushing? That I'm tired? I don't know the answers to those questions; as Pi says in Life of Pi, "Why can't reason give greater answers? Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer? Why such a vast net if there's so little fish to catch?" I can't answer so many of the questions that I've asked myself that it's more than a little maddening. Since COVID struck, I've had to turn to all of my coping mechanisms so often that they've become my living mechanisms. I don't have a way to find balance since everything I'm doing seems to be utilizing every trick I use just to keep moving forward. As a result, the loss of my writing muse rankles even more. I didn't realize that I could only write if things were stable. I thought that it was a deeper part of myself, rather than a fair-weather friend. Yet here we are. I've unofficially left my writing group--a group that stuck together, in one form or another, for over a decade. Another casualty to the coronavirus. I see their posts on Facebook and I can't do more than read what they're talking about. I don't chime in, I don't assert myself. I don't know what to do about any of it. I don't know how to navigate the difficult world that we now live in, one with political fault-lines embedded in the precautions we take, the decisions we make. Do I say to my group, "Hey, I'd love to get together again, but only if y'all are vaccinated!" If I do, whom does that alienate? Why do I even have to wonder about that? These sorts of tumults are another symptom of my writing sickness: I can't get out of my head long enough to become immersed elsewhere. Too much of my brain is clamoring with chaos and there's just no room for that creative space. That isn't to say that I'm not being creative. Most of my word output this month has been as I've written up the rules for a board game. I'm over 10,000 words into the rulebook (which, for obvious reasons, is not what the final draft of the rules would look like) and still enjoying that process. I paint, drum, guitar, and play games. I still do things that I appreciate and scratch a particular itch. It's just…I don't know if I'm ever going to do that with my words again. It's time for another bit of writing about my bits of writing.
I've talked a lot about my penchant for recording how many words I write per day/month/year. It's a way for me to see if I'm really doing anything in my chosen craft, and it has been really helpful in showing me where I focus. In fact, one of the reasons that I have fewer posts on this website is because I saw that I was spending a huge amount of my writing time focusing on my non-fiction and I wanted to change that. Today, I started looking at my word count for the year. It isn't where I want it to be: At the end of April, I had written about 150,000 words. These were split between my book about Metal Gear Solid, worldbuilding the place where my TTRPG is set, rules for my TTRPG, and picking at a bizarre retelling/remake of the Little Red Riding Hood story. There are other, miscellaneous additions, but that makes up the bulk of it. The thing that stood out to me, though, was how April 2021 compares to other Aprils. In other words, where do I stand as far as my word count after four months during the past four years? It breaks down like this:
Clearly, I'm doing about as well as I was at the same point during our first month of quarantine. Considering how much has happened to me and my family in the past half year, I think it makes sense that I'm still writing as if the world is on fire. Because it is. So, I'm not publicly flogging myself for having not written more in 2020. I was spending my school days in front of the computer, draining myself into cyberspace. Writing did not come easily then. By the time I became accustomed to the oddness of my school year, my wife was diagnosed with cancer. I even tried to do NaNoWriMo…then I contracted COVID. (I also got three or four rejections on my submissions for War Golem, if we're really adding to the pile, here.) In other words, I wasn't in a particularly creative headspace for a good portion of last year. And it doesn't really surprise me to see that 2021 is following suit. No, what really surprised me the most was the next bit of information that I gleaned. On my spreadsheet, I have a tally of all of my completed novella-length or longer projects. Because I've been doing NaNoWriMo since 2015, I've been finishing a couple of books a year pretty consistently. I mean, I even finished two novellas in 2020, despite everything else that was going on. But when I looked back at 2019--which was not my most productive year--I was surprised to see that it was 2019 where I finished the highest number of projects. How many? Seven. Seven books, totaling almost 300,000 words. Three were part of my novella-world project. Another was finishing up a NaNoWriMo from 2018 that I hadn't completed during the month. The next was a short story that morphed into a novella, one that I had been working on occasionally for a year or so. Novellas aside, I had two novels that I finished, both of them Shakespeare-adjacent: One was my Da Vinci Code but with Shakespeare book, Raleigh House. The other was my NaNoWriMo for 2019, Elsinore Ranch, which is a retelling of Hamlet. It makes me wonder what I did in 2019 that I've clearly forgotten how to do in the two years since. I know that a big portion of it is that my video game obsessions aren't easing up. For some reason, indulging my addictions doesn't satiate them. And I know that my life will not be "normal" again anytime soon--perhaps ever. It's hard to say. Will I ever get back to that level of prolificacy? Will I ever be so excited about my stories that I'd rather write them more than anything else? I mean, it isn't that I wasn't writing at all. It was just that nothing really sang to me. And I know that writers have to write, regardless of if their muse is crooning inspiration to them or not. But I'm not a professional writer. I don't know if I ever will be. I don't have a contract or a deadline to meet. I don't have to hit a quota. Yet I'm not happy that my numbers are trending downwards. I want to improve my output, my editing, my craft. I don't want 2019 to be my bumper crop for finished projects. So I guess I gotta figure out how to get what I'm after, huh? Well, it was nice while it lasted.
I had a goal of writing every day of 2021--an impossible goal, I knew, but one that did a fair bit of motivating for me even during the first hellish weeks of this new year. The thinking behind the goal was to relieve some of my self-imposed pressure to write a certain amount every day/week/month or whatever (though I've still a goal of drafting 30,000 words minimum each month, if possible). I figured that by simply expecting that I write something not work related, I would be able to keep moving along as a writer, slowly accreting the skills that I need to somehow sell my work. I was generous with my expectations: A couple of hundred words in my reading journal would suffice. Not a particularly lofty goal, to be honest. And it isn't as though I had to strain to do that for most of January. I began writing my own TTRPG during the end of my D&D Winterim, and (as often happens with me) I got caught in a flurry of creativity. I spent hours formulating rules, generating a character sheet, and even drafting an introductory module that acts as the prologue to the type of story I'd want this game to tell. That led to almost 20,000 words of work so far, all done in the space of a three weeks, give or take. What's more, I took a Friday off and headed to the great untamed wilderness known as downtown Provo to have some writing time at an Air BnB. I spent the weekend getting food delivered to my door (we are still in a pandemic, after all) and writing what struck my fancy. I generated a total of just over 20,000 words on those three days. Most of them are in my mashup of Red Riding Hood and Bloodborne, but a handful of them landed in the lore section of my TTRPG, too. It was a very pleasant experience, one that was designed to help my mental health as much as my word count. After all, Gayle is not even halfway through her chemotherapy and each time she has to go in it's a fresh ordeal for me. Despite the familiarity with the process of what's going on, the toll it takes on me is greater with each visit. So the trip last weekend did help recharge me a bit, if only because it allowed me to focus on writing without having other worries encroaching. (Gayle stayed with her mother for some of the time, so I could rest easy, knowing that she was being looked after. She was also feeling a lot better by then, so she even came and spent the night with me on Friday.) Despite all of that, this past week was grueling in all of the nondescript, unimportant ways that life weathers us. I can't point to any specific issue--there isn't, like, a phone call from an upset parent or a distressing bill come in the mail--that really made the week a misery. Certainly part of it comes from my dysthymia kicking in. I'm pretty good about keeping my Patronus pills filled and using the medication daily. It helps most of the time. However, "most of the time" is not "all of the time" and this past week has been pretty bad, emotionally speaking, for me. And that brings us up to my failed goal. I wanted to jot a couple of thoughts about The Hobbit into my reading journal to get my day's writing goal accomplished, but I hit a (potentially very expensive) snag: I couldn't find my Moleskine Pen+. This is the pen that I use with my special Moleskine notebooks that transcribes what I write and puts it into a TXT file so that I can digitally archive (and search through) the things that I write. It's one of those unnecessary-but-still-fun-and-cool bits of tech that tends to catch my attention. I had sent off my first Pen+ to get it repaired, which meant that I was without it for a couple of months. A new one arrived just before Christmas, allowing me to again write the way I wanted to. And when I went looking for it in my computer bag, it was nowhere to be found. This has not helped at all. Because of my mental illness, I have a tendency to fixate on things that go wrong in my life. They all add to a greater narrative of my own inadequacies, my failings for making the false assumption that things go right, and a type of "Well, of course that happened" feeling. This isn't healthy, I know, and I try to not let these sorts of things get me down. But, at the same time…they definitely get me down. Since what I wanted to write last night couldn't happen (how can I write in my special notebook without my special pen?), I simply let my goal go. I didn't write anything, not even a paragraph or two of lore for my TTRPG--perhaps the easiest thing that I could jot down. I blame my depression for that. This ennui continues to linger, though, and I keep cycling over my frustration at not doing what I should have done with my pen. It was an expensive purchase, and I really don't want to spend any money on another one. (Besides, if I do, that'll mean the original shows up, right? Isn't that what always happens?) Yet I'm deeply frustrated that I lost it. I have a system for keeping track of how I use the pen, but I have been lax in doing so with it lately. Now I reap the rewards. This sort of woe-is-me obviously isn't healthy, and it probably comes off as annoying. If you feel that way…um…why are you still reading? That seems strange that you're in control of that and yet you're still here. More than that, though, is a recognition that such trivial things can affect me. What I really think is going on is that there are so many things far beyond my control: The pandemic, chemotherapy, the endless stress of teaching and forcing myself to care when I least want to. The list goes on. Losing a pen is not particularly high on the list, but it was one of the things that I could have controlled. I didn't, and now I'm living with that regret. It's a spiral of frustration. Yes, it's only a pen. However, it's symbolic of a lot more to me than just a writing utensil. Hence why losing it meant--symbolically--that I had lost my ability/desire to write yesterday. And that's how a goal gets undone: Depression + life stress + something insignificant = failure. There's no right way to write.
Or rather, provided one is writing, that is the correct way, inasmuch as there can be a correct way. Hmm. If one must write, that is how one writes. Okay, look, pithy aphorisms aren't as easy to craft as Shakespeare makes it seem, so we'll settle with the more prosaic observation that, as long as words get written down, that's how the writing works. Yeah? Yeah. With 2021 fully upon us, trailing the stench clouds of 2020 behind it, I figured I should do my annual "plan for writing during the upcoming year" essay as a chance to lay out some of my hopes as far as my writing goes. I don't remember (nor do I want to look up) my previous year's goals. They most likely didn't happen, since I only managed to finish a novella or two and that was all, to say nothing of the tens of thousand fewer words I failed to write over the course of a twelvemonth. I still keep borderline-obsessive track of the words I jot down in all but my school capacity (like, I don't word count assignments or emails or whatnot), with a spreadsheet that gets more and more complicated with each successive year, so I have a fairly accurate view of how well I'm doing on the word-count front. Good ol' 2020 saw me crank out 482,881 words (as opposed to 2019's 528,743) a difference of over 45,000 words. That's almost an entire NaNoWriMo project's worth of writing. Since I completely failed at NaNoWriMo 2020, that makes sense. So I'm not saying that I did a bad job of writing in a general sense. I know that a lot of writers would love to produce that much content in a year. And while that's not all fiction writing, a fair chunk of it is. And while I lament that I didn't spend more time honing my craft, I can be somewhat proud of having managed to generate close to half a million words in the midst of a global pandemic, massive civil unrest, and frequent personal trials. What I want to do with 2021--as far as writing goes, of course--is to continue on the strengths of the last year. To that end, I decided to modify my goals. While I usually want to put in a certain amount of time into fiction--increasing the short stories that I sometimes create, or getting another bit of worldbuilding into my notes--I also derive pleasure from the act of writing itself. I love to type. I love to write by hand in my far-too-expensive-but-what-are-you-gonna-do notebooks. I love to brainstorm in my beaten-up-because-they-cost-a-quarter-jeez-Moleskine-could-you-maybe-drop-the-price-a-bit-you're-killing-me notebooks. It's great to have a diversity of ways that I go through the physical actions of writing. And, because 2020 taught me better than Steinbeck's title or Robert Burns' poem ever could, "the best laid schemes o' Mice and Men / Gang aft agley", I selected a daily requirement to write. No minimum requirement. No genre expectation. No expectation save that I grace the page with a squiggle or two. On one level, this feels like a capitulation, a throwing up of my hands in the face of the crushing reality of what I have to deal with and submitting to the unbending tide of responsibilities. On another level, though, it has--thus far, at least--been a gentle enough goal to maintain the pleasure of completing it and a steady enough pressure to ensure its continuation. Thus far, I have written every day. Some of it has been therapeutic and emotionally driven, such as the stuff that I write when discussing my wife's battle with breast cancer. Sometimes it's creating a new TTRPG (I'll essay on that another day). Often it's jotting down a page in my reading journal. (This one is particularly useful, as it means that I need to keep reading so that I have something to write about--double trouble!) Because of all the stress that's been my life recently, I've arranged for a couple days off to do a private writing retreat at an AirBnB. It's a difficult decision--COVID is still real and I live in a high risk area. I did go through a bout with the sickness, as well as getting the first round of the Moderna vaccine, so I feel a bit more comfortable making the trip. I also really need some writing time, not because I have a lot of writing that I feel pressing to get out of me (that sort of thing, the fire of a story that will only be quenched by writing it, hasn't happened to me in many a-year), but because I am pretty close to a breaking point, mentally speaking. Almost all of my wells for well-being have been dipping dry and the strain of knowing that it will continue until long past the seasons' change isn't helping in the least. Since Gayle is on her "good week" with her treatment, she and I both feel confident that she'll be all right without me around for a couple of days. (I'm not far away, in case of emergency, plus her mom is willing to be on-call, as it were.) I'm hoping that this will do a little bit of recharging my spirits and that I'll have a bit more fortitude in confronting the rest of what's troubling me. And if it doesn't? Well, you'll know. I'll probably write an essay about it. Goodness gracious. Well, 2019, I'm really okay that you're leaving. What a year… That isn't to say that some great things didn't happen: They did, and I'm proud of some of what I've achieved in the past dozen months. Still, there was a lot of stress, strain, and sadness that came with the passing of time, and seeing those woes recede in the rearview mirror is fine by me. I can only hope that they don't pursue me into the new decade. Goals--Made, Lost, and Won As I was staring down the barrel of 2019, I wanted to try something different in terms of my readings: I wanted to reread all of Shakespeare's works, as well as go about my reading habits differently. I wanted to spend a lot of time reading certain books, with less emphasis on my nonfiction writing. I also hoped to finish writing some shorter books. Let's see how I did on these, shall we? Shakespeare reading: This one will go down as a definitive brick on my road to hell, as it was made with the best of intentions and was promptly glossed over. I honestly blame 1 Henry VI for being a fair slog that I'd just seen the previous year at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. Some of Shakespeare's plays can come up again and again without growing stale. The first part of Henry VI is not one of them. It took me a fair amount of time to read through that one, so though I'm finally in Richard III, it's rather frustrating to be sitting at the end of December and only have six plays finished. Yes, I'm going more slowly because I have pencil in hand as I'm roving through the pages, but that doesn't change the fact that, if given a chance to sit and read some of the Bard, I'll probably find something else to do with my time. This isn't because I don't love Shakespeare--obviously--but because reading his stuff is a lot of work. I usually come home from work having already put forward a lot of work, so the idea of picking up some "light reading" at the end of the day usually means not picking up The Norton Shakespeare. I did acquire quite a bit of Shakespeare-adjacent things, including Tyrant by Stephen Greenblatt, Richard III: England's Most Controversial King by Chris Skidmore, and Shakespeare's First Folio by Dr. Emma Smith. My Milton and Shakespeare library grows apace, much faster than my attention span, lamentably. Reading Anew: I had planned on reading one book per quarter, pencil in hand, with an eye toward becoming a deeper reader--as the previous year I ended up reading quite widely. There's nothing wrong with this goal, save my lack of will in completing it. Persuasion by Jane Austen failed to charm me, and I ended up having a really rough time trying to finish the book. With that taking so much longer than I anticipated, I ended up skipping out on whatever else I had planned--though I have read some more in Somme, which is immensely sad (the book, not the amount I've read)--and going back to my default of reading whatever snatched my fancy for the nonce. The pending Harry Potter Winterim, however, did put a monkey-wrench in my summer plans, as I realized that, by mid-July, I would have to start my reread of the entire Harry Potter series. This I did, reading the first three books in the delightful illustrated version, then the final four in my old Scholastic editions, all of which were carefully marked up from the last time I taught the class (back in January 2012). I finished Deathly Hallows a couple of weeks ago. That six month reread ate into the time I might have otherwise spent on the other books I was planning on reading. I'm disappointed by this failure, if I'm being honest. I wanted to broaden my deep-reading skills, but I was flustered by the first choice going so far awry. I still want to read a philosophy, a piece of fiction on my To Be Read pile, and a history book. I still want to improve my reading base. So I may try the same sort of thing in 2020, though appropriately tweaked. And, while I'm on the subject of what I read, I'm going to throw down the list of completed books right here, mostly as a way to remind myself what I finished this year: There are a couple of books I'm missing, I think, which would put me up to about 75 total titles this year. Some interesting (to me) notes: Numbers 48-52, 69, and 72 are unpublished works. Crimson Hands (number 52) is one that I read from a friend in the writers' group. The others are all books that I wrote over the course of the year (more on that below). Other interesting things include that I have absolutely no memory of what Kids These Days is about; it took me a while to remember what Skeleton Keys is; Mother Tongue is an absolute blank in my mind. While I can conjure a couple of thoughts about most of the things on the list, these are some that I don't even know what to think. I also had duplicate readings--not just the normal ones of Les Misèrables or Pride and Prejudice, which I read every year with my students--of things like Why Write? and It. (In the case of Why Write?, I finished it in January, then again in November.) As a matter of blasé interest, I also kept track of my comics, video games, plays, and movies that I enjoyed this year. 1. Fellowship of the Ring I rather doubt this is an exhaustive list. Also, there are still a few days left of the year, and I need to finish watching the Harry Potter movies. In other words, I've another five titles to add to this. I think it's safe to say that I consumed about 100 titles, though how I counted them is rather arbitrary: I counted individual seasons of Upstart Crow, but didn't include any of the Invader Zim or Animaniacs cartoons that I listened to as I shuttled the kids hither and yon during the year. Still, this gives a good sense of what I'm willing to devote my time to, if nothing else.
Nonfiction Writing: This has absolutely decreased this year. Back in 2018, I wrote over 625,000 words. Between my daily essays and the journaling I did, I estimate that about 395,000 of those words were nonfiction. And, though I've still a couple of days to add to the number, my current (not counting this essay) writing levels are these: Nonfiction = 213,000; fiction = 281,000; total (including editing and worldbuilding) = 520,000 words. I'm almost a hundred thousand words behind where I was yesteryear. My fiction output is upped (281,000 in 2019 versus 230,000 in 2018), but my overall word count is lower. In terms of my goal to write less nonfiction, I definitely achieved that. I missed it, however. I really enjoyed putting my thoughts down for all dozen or so readers to see. I liked having the ability to sound off on whatever it was that ate at me, to say nothing of the satisfaction of having written over 600,000 words in twelve months. That's not a small amount of writing, and I feel like it's definitely been a part of my life that I should reincorporate. However, as I look at those estimated numbers, I remember why I decided to ease off on the essays. I've written over a thousand of these things now, and even more than my NaNoWriMo projects, they are abandoned. I don't reread them--heck, I don't even look them over once before publishing them. They're all rough drafts. And, with the exception of the memoir about Shakespeare, I don't think I mind them being anything more than what they are. I'm okay with them being just sketches that never turn into paintings. They're lumps of slightly formed clay. That's fine. The issue is, I've spent hundreds of thousands of words honing my nonfiction writing. I can slap something together with precious little thought and still have it make a bit of sense. This comes because of all of that practice. If I had my druthers, I would want to see that much commitment to my fiction writing. I want to be a fiction writer, not an essayist (and, having read quite a bit by David Sedaris, I know that the expectation and competition in that genre are far above what I think I can attain). I have to put the time in writing fiction if I want to improve how I write fiction. Which leads me to the last goal I wanted to write about… Fiction Writing: I completed a lot of projects this year. I've talked about them before, but in case you've forgotten, I wanted to write a five-novella book that feeds into a novelette--almost like an Avengers-lite, a way of getting to know five characters well, then see them all come together to solve the bigger problem that they were all experiencing (to one degree or another) in their own way. But I had some lingering issues to take care of. The first was my 2018 NaNoWriMo novel, Theomancy. Of all my NaNoWriMo books, this one is perhaps the only one that I'd like to see again--though when and in what way I don't really know. I tend to write an idea, then, if it didn't work, abandon it in favor of something else. So I don't know quite what to do with Theomancy, save knowing that I did like the world, even if (as always happens) the wheels fell off by the end of the story. Theomancy, however, wasn't finished in November of 2018. I let it hover on the edges of my mind until January was about to start. See, in January 2019, I had a winter writing retreat, during which time I decided to finish the NaNoWriMo novel. So while I technically started Theomancy in 2018, I finished it in January 2019. So that's one project done. I've also been working on my horror novella, Mon Ster, for quite a while--a couple of years, in fact. Through some luck, some moments of worthwhile writing, and continual pressure, I finished it in the summer of 2019. That makes for two completed projects. Last school year, I had the opportunity to write each day for about fifty minutes. The goal was, with the rest of the class, to write 50,000 words on our projects by the end of the semester. I spent a portion of that time channeling a couple of different sets of inspiration: At that time, I was playing Resident Evil 2 remake and enjoying that survival-horror-and-hunt-for-clues kind of story. I had also listened to Mr. Lemoncello's Library with my kids, which was using reading, books, and authors as the fuel for his own puzzle story. Having been disappointed in a recent Shakespeare's Secret, I decided to write my own, Shakespeare-inspired puzzle story. Basically, think of The Da Vinci Code but with Shakespearean clues, and you have Raleigh House. Tonally, I think it could have been a bit tighter, but as a love-letter to the Bard, I think it went pretty well. I worked on that one all of second semester, finishing it sometime before school ended (if I remember correctly). That makes for three projects done. Once the writing season (read: summer) was in full swing, I set down the aforementioned novellas-into-novelette story. This required hours of careful plotting, copious note-making, and plenty of revisions to the outline. It's easily the most complicated project that I've tried to do. In my typical way, I wanted to start my first summer writing retreat by having a clear idea of what to do, but not a single word down in the actual writing. During that retreat, I managed to write the entire first novella--about 32,000 words of it--with a bit of time to spare. This was exciting and unexpected, and meant that, though the entire story still had thousands of words to go, I had accomplished something toward it. I count that as the fourth finished project. With the time off from school, I found a way to weave the second novella into being. It wasn't easy, as writing at home is no problem when it's quiet, but as I have three boys, quiet time isn't particularly abundant. (Maybe that's why I like writing on Sundays so much; the children aren't running in and out, friends aren't over, and the entire day is more sedate.) Nevertheless, I had a goal of finishing Novella Two before approaching the next writing retreat. Days before I left for the family cabin, I finished it. Fifth project: Done. When it was time for my second writing retreat (the first was with my writing group; this one was solo), I managed--despite coming down with conjunctivitis--to write a 29,000 word novella. Thus I completed a sixth project. After that retreat, the reading really kicked in, to say nothing of the family vacations that ate up the remainder of the time. School resumed, my attention fractured, and I spent almost none of my writing time in the Novella Story. (I managed to squeeze out four painful chapters--a third of the project--but haven't touched the thing since the end of September.) However, November came, and with it, the desire to retell Hamlet in a modern setting and without the poetry. I started Elsinore Ranch on 1 November, finished the NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000 words, and left the story incomplete. At the same time, I started an edit of War Golem to go along with my goal to improve my editing skills. That took up a fair portion of November and December, though I did manage to finish that edit before Christmas arrived. I call this one my seventh writing project of the year. That's not the end, though. Despite having left my retelling alone through the majority of December, just this past week saw me again picking away at it. I conjoined some chapters, cut out some of what I thought I wanted, and focused on getting it done. With little fanfare, I finished Elsinore Ranch yesterday (28 December). It took a lot--and I can't say that it's all been worth it--but I did complete eight projects in 2019. Yes, you can quibble about the merits of short stories, novellas, and novels, but I feel like each one of these projects is different enough to appreciate them the way I did here. The quality of the stories varies widely, as do the subjects and characters. Still, finishing this many works in a single year is nothing to be ashamed of. My word count may be smaller than before, but I think that I've done something remarkable. Next Year's Goals For that, I don't know. I could perhaps postulate some things, but this essay is already creeping up on 3,200 words, which is far too long for a cold winter's day. I'll end it thus: Just as this year marks a highwater mark for project completion, I'm hopeful that this next decade will see--somehow--a change in my writing career as a whole. I can, at least, hope. Over the course of the summer, I was not idle: We spent lots of time together as a family in sundry places--Yellowstone, the cabin, at home, and my wife and I just got back from our annual pilgrimage to Cedar City and the Utah Shakespeare Festival--and I have also read a great deal. The result was that, though I've output fewer words this year than last--or, possibly, any year in the past three or so--I still have a lot of writing to show for it. I documented experiences in my reading journal--a bit of a departure, but so many bizarre things happened during this summer, I had to write them down. And, since I had my reading journal with me, I decided to use that, rather than putting anything down online.
We're eight months into 2019 and the summer has all but closed its doors. (I start my teacher training on Monday; students arrive the week after.) When the year began, I was thinking that I would ease off on my writing in order to focus more on my reading--to make my reading journal overflow with thoughts as I closely read four books. So far, I have read one of them (Persuasion, by Jane Austen; I didn't like it nearly as much as I had hoped) and cracked the cover of another--got three or four paragraphs into it. The history book that I imagined I would finish up hasn't been touched since March or so. I can't even remember what my other book was supposed to be, and my reread of Shakespeare stalled in 1 Henry VI (not my favorite play, and since I saw it just last season, I'm not really motivated to reread it). In other words, my goals for this year are in utter shambles. That isn't to say, however, that I'm not reading. My list of finished titles (not counting comic books, which are tracked in a different list) currently has 56 entries, with the most recent one being yesterday's conclusion of my rereading of the beautifully illustrated version of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. (Because I'm teaching a course on Harry Potter this January, I figured I ought to get a head start on my reread, so that I'm not spending every waking moment over Winter Break trying to cram in all seven books, the play, and the new movies.) I finished rereading It back in June--a goliath read no matter how much I love the book--and I'm picking at other things, too. In other words, there's still a lot going into the well. I'm not, however, pleased with my failure of my year's goal. It was admirable of me to want to stretch myself away from the kind of stuff that I'm normally reading, but I also found myself unhappy with the time I was spending. It isn't that I don't want to read more Austen or dive into a philosophy book; I do. It's just that…well, reading is hard and the mental energy to get to the point where I can appreciate the texts is hard to come by. I used to believe my lie that I was expending too much energy on the teaching part of my life--that when summer arrived, I would be able to read more and read better. I now know that I'm simply weak-willed. Yes, it's enjoyable to dive into a book (and the Harry Potter books are particularly good at this) and not really be able to surface because you're pulled into the world. However, not all books are that way. Indeed, I'd say most aren't (and I would put my own writing in there, too). They require something of their audience, some sort of mental exertion. Video games, however, rarely require that…so I have a lot of hours logged on Overwatch. I took a break for a couple of nights to beat Resident Evil 2 again, but otherwise it was pretty much that. Though I enjoyed Beyond Two Souls, there really hasn't been a game that pulled me in and kept me returning the way Overwatch has, though I am getting a bit bored with it. And that's kind of been what this summer has taught me: In my limited amount of discretionary time, I will likely only get worse at saying no to video games and easy entertainment that Netflix provides (even if challenging shows like Neon Genesis Evangelion is available) over expending the effort to read. I know that this is a horrible confession, especially as I'm a literature teacher, but it's an honest confession. And, to go along with the honesty bit, I know that I read quite a bit more than the average adult in America does. Still, reading (and writing) is hard. There are easier things to do with one's time (I say as I note that I have 67 in the video games/movies/comic book list). And being above average on reading--especially when the percentage of Americans reading continues to decline--isn't quite the accolade I might wish. If nothing else, summer has given me a chance to stop my day-to-day stresses and recognize that I have a lot of other areas that need attention. I can't hope to end them simply because I have ten weeks in which to relax--especially when they're such incredibly packed ten weeks as my family tends to have--and I have to learn to come to peace with that. For the past year (lol, it's been nine days) I have been trying to improve my writing as a fiction writer. I decided to go ahead and make shorter essays in order to preserve time and bandwidth for my "real" writing (it's "real" except that it's fiction, so how's that for some type of paradox?) and editing. I knew that there'd be a tradeoff if I wanted to improve my fiction…what I didn't know is how little I'd like the cost.
It turns out that I don't relish writing a short and sweet essay. I feel like I have more to say about almost all of the topics. Part of it, surely, is the training. I've spent a lot of time at my keyboard since August of 2016, pounding out my daily writing. And though, as I mentioned before, I don't view that as a waste, it has given me a particular toleration that I'm now having to work around. What's strange to me is how naturally I ossified; I started writing my essays, experimenting with different topics and ideas--the music video analyses are my personal favorites, though they were easily the most time-consuming, but I also like the "If I wrote a [fill in the blank] superhero story, what would it be like?" essays--and that would be that. Then I migrated to my website, which, when I post the links to the essays on social media, often would put a stupid looking picture in the picture place holder. Since then, I've taken to finding a picture that is somehow connected to what I'm talking about in the essay--something that I somewhat wish I had a record of, but not really caring enough to do anything about it. Other things haven't changed at all: I still rarely edit what I've produced, instead letting my fingers fly and correcting anything that I see flagged in spellcheck or happen to glance as I go. And, as far as first-draft capability, I feel I have that: That is, I'm better at writing a first draft that is closer to what I meant to say than I was two years ago. That skill, at least, is transferrable (I think). But it also means that flaws in thinking, language, or style are preserved, amber-like, in the internet's ether. That's a somewhat intimidating (and sometimes embarrassing) reality that I have developed a thick skin on for the simple reason that I don't want to edit my essays. Despite these slight changes, I'm feeling less excited about my non-fiction work, and though I'm editing diligently, I haven't found the same drive to write new words. That has been significantly harder, and it's something that I need to improve--and soon. If for no other reason than because I only have 31 chapters in the current book, which means that I'll be done editing it in the beginning of February. I guess I'm saying that making resolutions and then not following through with them makes you feel bad, so I wasn't expecting to be unhappy with myself for having spent almost a fortnight doing what I set out to do. I'm succeeding, but I don't think I like the short-and-sweet style of these essays. Who knows? Maybe I'll change my mind as the days--and words--go by. ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the name of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! After it's all said and done, I wrote 625,552 words this year. That, I submit, is quite a few. Over 625,000 to be precise. In fact, I wrote more than that in total, since I didn't count work-related things--typing up assignments or emails--or my social media posts, which would add a fair bit. I'm probably looking at an additional 20,000 words or so, if I had to guess, but since I'm already approximating the numbers that are in the total, I figure it's okay to err on the conservative side. I took some surprisingly meticulous notes on what I wrote, with the monthly breakdown as seen below. (Yes, I included this essay in the calculations, in order to make it as complete as possible.) There are some clear takeaways: June and February were, by far, my most productive months. The former is hardly surprising: June saw me taking not one, but two writing retreats to my family's cabin. There I wrote for upwards of eight hours a day. The most productive day of the year was actually 28 June, when I wrote 18,220 new words and edited an additional 250 words. The next closest was the day before, when I edited about the same amount, but wrote 14,268 in my novel and then an additional 1,500 words in my reading journal. That day, then, is one of the most important days in the year--to go along with my trip to D.C. and some of the other significant things--because that was the day when I understood myself in a way I never had before. I was writing my journal in response to It, by Stephen King, and I only stopped writing what I did because my hand was hurting. So though the day saw over 16k words, those 1,500 are probably some of the most important--to me personally--words that I've ever written.
February being in the second place is a bit of a shock, though. What, I thought to myself when I saw that, did I do in February to put it so high on the list? Digging back into the details, I remembered that, over the Valentine weekend, I went to LTUE, where I wrote about 22k words of notes throughout the different panels. That gave the shortest month of the year a massive boost. Combined with some pretty steady revisions and consistent essay-writing, and I came in with almost 70,000 words. While it isn't close to June's 121,000 word month, it's still an impressive total, methinks. Third place goes, unsurprisingly, to November, where I was committed to writing at least 50,000 words. Combined with everything else I typically write, it's almost a given that I would get so many words typed up during the eleventh month. Now that I can sit on my nest-egg of 625,000 words, I'm free to wonder what the value is and what I'm shooting for next year. I had a goal to write three novels in 2018--I failed at that goal completely. I didn't even finish two. I also wanted to get half a million words, and that I definitely accomplished. So what should I do next? Part of me just wants to keep on--I always have a book sitting on my shelf that needs to be edited. I have desires (fading embers of desire, maybe) to get out there and submit War Golem, though I'm not at all confident I've done enough work to really shop it around. I want the goal for what comes 365 days from now to be something that requires my effort and dedication, but isn't cripplingly large. Much like how I'm trying to figure out a new reading goal, I also need to figure out what my new writing goal is going to be. Here are some givens: I want to keep writing daily essays. However, I have an internal clock/expectation that I need to hit 1,000 words minimum before I turn it over to the internet. Perhaps I should chill out on that one? Allow myself to write a little less non-fiction so that I can focus on what I really care about? Here's a possibility: Regardless of how many words I put down, I want to write some fiction every day, on top of my essays. Another possibility would be to eschew the daily essays and insist that I write, say, three times a week, but it's always a specific amount of time--maybe twenty minutes or thirty. I could also figure out what I want to do with my edits: Every finished new chapter needs to be matched by an edited chapter. In fact, now that I think about that, I kind of want that to be part of my goal: The year of 2019 will be the Year of Editing™. That I'll finish editing Ash and Fire and return to War Golem so that I can make it as good as possible before shifting into its sequel, War Golems. That sounds good… I guess we'll see. All my words for the year are done. What else is there to do but to sift through the morass and see if any of them are worth putting out into the world's stage? Wish me luck. A week or so ago, I posted my list of all the books I read, as well as comics, movies, and video games. The list has expanded since then, as I've finished a book or two and I watched Teen Titans Go! To The Movies for a third time. And while I'm proud of myself for how much art I've appreciated, I felt like I need to think hard about what I'm hoping to accomplish about next year. I mentioned that I don't know how many books I want to have read by the end of 2019--though I likely won't shoot for 100 again. So that's what I'm bouncing around in this essay: What are some things that I'd like to do in 2019 that's different from 2018?
Though it still has familiar components (I like books, movies, video games, and comic books, so I think it's fair to say those will all be feeding my need for art), I want to try to find something that will challenge me just a little bit--yes, I said a little bit; there are lots of things going on in my life that are non-negotiable consumers of my bandwidth, so the amount of slack I have with which to play is limited. Here's my first idea: Broaden my reading diet. Instead of shooting for 100 titles throughout the year, maybe something more like Pioneer Book in Provo does with their reading journals--something with red on its cover; a winner of a major award; a book from a different genre than what I'm used to; something controversial--and tailor it to a list that appeals to me. If I go with this, I would want to have some categories like "Book that's politically different than my point of view" and "Book that is from a part of history that I don't already know" and "A book about a World War I battle" and "A book about an aspect of World War II that I don't talk about very much (so, probably naval)". I'd also add, "Books that I've spent more than a year trying to finish and still haven't," which would include Jerusalem by Alan Moore, The Stand by Stephen King, Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson, The Iliad by Homer, and The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. Those five books have been plaguing me for a long time. It'd be nice to get finally them out of the way. The problem I see is that sometimes I'm just not in the mood for what's on my plate. Reading is hard and rewarding, but it shouldn't be painful--at least, not always. There are times when it's good to be difficult. But why should I spend time in books that aren't grabbing me? Do I want to make it so that my reading is one done entirely out of duty? And if it makes me upset--like reading a book whose politics differ immensely from mine--is that really benefiting me? Can I figure out a way to do this where it doesn't feel like a chore? Another thing could be simply prioritizing. That is, having an order of operations. For example, I have to write my essay, then I have to read for fifteen minutes of whatever I need to read, then I have to make sure the dishes are done, and then I can watch a movie or play a video game. The advantages of having that kind of schedule is that, after a couple of weeks, it'll be so rote that I won't have to really catalogue what to do next, as I already have everything set up. The downside to this is that my life, for as regimented as it is, doesn't always work in the same flow on the day-to-day. If one thing gets out of whack, then I'm in trouble, especially because I like to spend time with my family. Often, we find ourselves playing video games or watching cartoons together, and that throws off my desire to do anything but continuing to vegetate. (There's a reason that, on days off (like today), I always try to do my writing first thing in the morning. I'm less likely to write it later in the day as I get distracted by various forms of media.) I feel like this is tenuous. Here's a possibility: Make sure that I have at least one book a quarter that's worth writing about in my reading journal. That's four books--not too many, honestly--but they really have to be worthwhile. They can't be yet-another-Encyclopedia Brown. The idea on this is that, instead of reading widely, I'm reading very specifically, taking care to consume the texts that make me think. Obviously, I'd be reading other books, but the goal would be to find four books that make me scurry to my journal after every reading session. If I go along with that one, then I will have to be very selective about what I choose. I just got a new, shorter biography of John Milton, called John Milton: A Hero for Our Time. Is that something that should be a Journal Book™? What about the other book I've purchased, a compendium of art and behind-the-scenes information about Final Fantasy VII, VIII, and IX? Um, yeah, that one doesn't count. That won't work. Okay, so what will? I could see myself standing in Barnes and Noble for a good hour or two, carefully considering the titles that are before me. I feel like, if I did this one, it would have to be genre specific. Something from the sci-fi/fantasy section, something from the literature section, something from the philosophy section, and something from the non-fiction/science section. I already have some books that fall into those areas*, so maybe this would be a good chance to see them checked off? Perhaps what I really need to do is swear off Overwatch (as soon as my PlayStation Plus account expires, I'm done, I promise…until the summer) and other never-ending video games so that, if I am playing, I'm focusing on games with a narrative text. Games like Spider-Man or Monster Hunter World; though I've already played through the former twice and I just got the latter, so I can't say that it's particularly narrative rich. The idea is that, if I'm not reading narratives, I should still become more aware of them. I replayed Metal Gear Solid IV not too long ago, and filled pages with analyses and thoughts. The same goes for Final Fantasy X. I'm writing down thoughts and trying to use the narrative of video games to better my own understanding of how stories can be told. If I'm using strong-narrative video games and journaling on those, would that count for me as a good change for the new year? I'm not sure. The more I think about it, the more I think I want to do the "Four Great Books", with the understanding that every reading session also has a writing component, where I try to digest what I just finished reading. As I wrote the footnote* about the possible texts, I found myself getting excited by the idea. And if I'm excited about it, then maybe I'll actually follow through? Who knows? Well, whatever I end up doing, I'm certain that 2019 will be a year filled with reading and thinking. That makes me eager for the new year. --- * If you're curious: The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang is supposedly a shockingly powerful read, which would be my fantasy book. That or The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin. I recently purchased Sense and Sensibility but haven't touched it since then; getting some more Austen read would be an excellent move. I have been wanting to reread Gamer Theory and Molecular Red by McKenzie Wark for quite some time, though I recently hit up parts of the former and can't really progress in the latter until I've read some Kim Stanley Robinson, so I might try to comprehend either The Parallax View by Slavoj Zizek or The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord. I also have The Materialist Shakespeare that is a collection of essays that I've been meaning to read since forever. So I'd have to choose among those three to satisfy the philosophy one. For the final section, I would either pick the Stephen Greenblatt analysis of Shakespeare, Tyranny, or go with The Tyrannosaur Chronicles by David Hone. Those are very different options, though. Though the year isn't officially over yet, I wanted to do a quick look-back at the titles that I've read or watched or listened to during 2018. It's a fairly comprehensive list--I tried to be diligent in my notetaking--and though it should grow by at least one title this month (I'm rereading Elantris by Brandon Sanderson as I prepare for the fantasy literature Winterim that I'm putting together), this is a pretty thorough overview of what I've read (which includes audiobook format) and watched/played. For the first category, I only counted books; for the second, I included comic books, video games (though Overwatch can't ever really end, so I put it on the list since I've played it so much), and movies/TV series that I've finished. I decided to keep them separate this year so that it would be easier to write this essay. Books (those with the asterisk are podcasts of a sufficient length and cohesion that I consider them book-like):
The X's are simply the marking that I read the title, which my app keeps as a checklist; you can ignore them. Those marked in bold are titles that I recommend, for one reason or another. Everything of Shakespeare, regardless of if I caught it and bolded it, you should read. The world would be a better place if more people read Shakespeare. Some of the books aren't available for the casual, interested reader: Melanie Sees A Ghost (which I think I misspelled the main character's name), Mistfall, and both War Golem and War Golems are all books that, in the first two cases, were written by others and I read/finished them this year, or, in the final two cases, is my own writing. (Technically, Theomancy should be on this list…but I haven't finished writing it, so it doesn't count.) Here's the list for the non-book forms of entertainment (those marked with a degree symbol are movies or TV series; the rest are comics or video games):
Again, I put in bold the stuff that I think that I'm really glad I had time to experience. Every video game on the list is for the PlayStation 4, while some of the comics are trades of different lengths. So Saga Vol 6 is only three or four issues, while Captain Marvel was seven or eight of them. It's still a good list that shows a lot of my interests. It also shows that I'd rather read Shakespeare than watch him (which is weird) and that my movies/video games are much lower brow than what I bother reading.
I find this whole list both encouraging and frustrating. Combined--and counting some of the things that I had on my list but I never finished--I have almost 200 titles of entertainment that I've completed this year. When I phrase it that way, it sounds really shallow of me. Like, don't I have better things to do with my time? And, sometimes, yeah, I really did. I regret watching Wild Wild West and Sky Captain, as both movies were poorly done. (The advantage, I guess, to having lousy movies I've seen is that I've lost, at most, a couple of hours; video games and novels eat up a lot more time, regardless of how good they are.) The amount of effort I've put into some things--playing Overwatch or Bloodborne, for example, which are untraditional in their approach to narrative and, therefore, hard to include on a list like this--isn't necessarily equal to the amount of time I've put into others. But what of that? What is the purpose of entertainment save to entertain? I don't really buy that, though, as I feel that there's a lot more going on in most of the things that I choose to watch. Yes, I'm interested in genre fiction--I'm unapologetic about that--so there's a lot more flashy, spectacle-driven work on this list. But some of what I read/viewed is profoundly important--V for Vendetta and Infinity War come to mind--as being significant commentary about our world and culture. I think I'm a better person for having gone through most of this list. Conclusion On the whole, what do I think of my time? Well, I wish I could have read more. I'm honestly disappointed that I didn't exceed my goal of 100 books more fully. Sure, that falls to about two titles a week, so I was able to get that goal because I listened to some really short books with my boys. Knocking back Encyclopedia Brown and The Obvious Clues or whatever the next title happened to be was something that I could do in the course of two or three trips from home to work. On the other hand, I reread It, as well as the behemoths of Homo Deus, Les Miserables (abridged), Citizens, and a couple of other really hefty tomes. Doing that kind of counterbalances the other parts of my reading diet. The thought of doing a page count instead of a title count has struck me: Then I could count anything--even my reading of Alan Moore's Jerusalem or Brandon Sanderson's Oathbringer as what I've read, but not completed, this year--but that gets really tricky when we start throwing in audiobooks or Kindle books that do Kindle location instead of pages. My rough guess I that I read over 10,000 pages this year. I don't know what I would even set for a goal on page number…so, no, I don't think I'll shift it. What should my goal be? Well, I think this time I'll keep it at 100, but see if I can't hit parity between audio and regular books. I can pretty much remember which was which on the list above, but I don't want to count it up. I'm going to shoot for 50 audio titles and 50 normal, then see how I feel at the ashen end of December 2019. I'm curious to see what will strike my fancy in the next dozen months. === ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the name of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! |
AuthorWould you like to support my writings? Feel free to buy me a coffee (which I don't drink, but I do drink hot chocolate) at my Ko-Fi page. Thanks! Archives
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