Inherent BS #1: Writers Part 3: Being "Rational"

So, having gotten over my own inherent BS, I've come back to this, the third and final part of my first attempt to explore...other people's inherent BS (and my own).

And what's left for me to cover? Well, I've already hit the people who are way too casual about the job and the people who are just a wee bit too intense about it. And really, all that's left to cover is...well...rationality.

The Goldilocks Zone


The first aspect of the inherent BS in rationality in writing is "The Goldilocks Zone". The Goldilocks Zone is like the Twilight Zone, only with bears... Well, okay, not really. I'm borrowing this term from Astronomers for the point where in life can exist in a state which we know of. It works well for this too because only in The Goldilocks Zone of writing can sane people thrive. You see, most people with a completely normal outlook on life can't actually manage to be a writer for long without losing their shit. Either they're going to not actually be a writer (because they don't take it seriously) or they're going to try to be a writer and then go completely batshit within a year or two.

But then there's The Goldilocks Zone, that magic point where they're just serious enough to get it done but just relaxed enough to not want to stick their head in an oven. It's a beautiful, magical place of sanity where someone realizes that this is a competitive market and not every single rejection is a sign of the coming apocalypse. These are the ones who make a reasonable living doing what they enjoy without becoming so entangled in it that they feel every editing mark like a dagger in the back. Sounds lovely, doesn't it? So why do I think it belongs here in the pantheon of Inherent BS?



It doesn't exist! There's no middle point where everything's "just right". What you can get are the people who think they're there. They'll sound sane, they'll look sane, they may even have a couple copies of some book printed. But anyone who's really fallen into the serious category is completely off their rocker on some level. Though, sometimes you get the people who aren't serious but fall ass backwards into a giant publishing contract for no damn good reason. But those people don't count either. Point remains, if you're serious, you're crazy, it's just variances of how crazy you actually are.



The Emperor's New Prose



Another BS aspect of "rationality" is on the side of the readers. Several times in the past I've seen the differing opinions of what people should or shouldn't do when it comes to having their friends reading their work rather than going straight into the lion's den. Several times people have advocated the "never use your friends" philosophy as a rule of thumb and in a lot of cases they'd be right.

Sure, your friends are the people you can trust and the people who can be counted on to be there whenever you need quick input. But these people are also the people who care if your feelings get crushed. No matter who your friends are, they'll always have this bias towards your well being. The difference comes in how exactly they interpret your needs.

Say, for instance, they think that protecting you means not upsetting you by giving you bad news. These people will lie through their teeth to make sure that you don't suffer the pain of having to deal with what they really think. They really think they're doing you a favor and in turn they are, but only short term. They're protecting you without considering the long term consequences of their protections. They may prevent you from feeling like a fool today, but once you've been exposed to the public it's only a matter of time before some kid points out the fact you've just left your house without a stitch of clothing despite being perfectly sober.

And if you're not sober, those same friends need to man up and get you that intervention they've been considering.

It doesn't end at that point either. You've got to consider the fact they may hold onto the lies after they've sent you plastered into the public eye. Once it gets back, knowing damn well that your story wasn't good enough, they'll still hold onto the idea that you should keep supporting it. "Keep trying," they'll say, "A little perseverance goes a long way!"



But if they really want to see you succeed, they'll be as blunt as a baseball bat up the side of the head. Famously, JRR Tolkien was told by one of his friends "not another fucking elf". Obviously, that man did not have a circle of friends who cared much for his feelings and well being. And look at what became of his work generations later. Think of it as "skull training". You let them hit you over the head with your own manuscript enough times and you'll adapt to avoid further concussions or learn how to disarm them with a swift kick to the jimmies.

But how do you know which group you have? Well, if they're always praising your work but you don't see any progress, you know you're probably dealing with a group of yes men. On the other hand, if they critique you, there's still a 50/50 shot they might be holding back the stuff they're really concerned about.

Not long ago I told someone her character reminded me of Bella Swan without the vampires. It was a bit blunt, little brutal, but once I'd said it, a couple of her friends repeated the same thing. Obviously, none of them wanted to take the first stab at her kidneys, the messy work was left to me. But if they'd just gotten it over with, the suffering would have been a little less drawn out.

So what does a writer do about the friend issue? Approach them with caution and watch for patterns. If you've got a pattern of people raining sunshine on your every work, you should move on. If they're providing criticisms but you feel some hesitation from them, you should push for harsher criticisms or find someone who'll provide it. But in the end, just make sure that you surround yourself with people who are blatantly honest.



And armed.

Can't sleep, clowns'll eat me...

One of my favorite songs, for reasons I can rarely understand, is "Be Human". It's a little tune from the soundtrack of Ghost in the Shell that often drifts to mind whenever I find myself worrying too much about whatever may be. I guess it's strange that, from time to time, I relate better to the mechanical people that the song represents. But one section of the song, more than any other, sticks with me almost constantly.

I analyze and I verify and I quantify enough
100 percentile no errors no miss
I synchronize and I specialize and I classify so much
Don't worry 'bout dreaming because I don't sleep --

It's the part that always springs to my mind first, which is good, because it's the first part of the song. But I've always felt it represents me and my near lifelong battle with insomnia. Sometimes I wish I could shut it off, just, turn it off and make it stop. I try to sleep and I end up face down in a pillow for over an hour while worrying about things that shouldn't be a problem. I know everyone has problems sleeping when they worry, but not as many people keep the hours I do...

I can't help it, I just can't sleep.

If all things fail in my life, I know I have one job above all others which I was practically born to do: night shift security. I'm big (sometimes, little too big), I'm pretty observant and, most importantly, I've been known to have periods of insomnia that have kept me wide awake for nearly 48 hours at a time. I just can't shut my brain off as it keeps screaming at me.

Being naturally a nocturnal creature myself, I often sleep when the sun rises and wake around noon. Most people my age who say something like that are some sort of drunken party animal, but as I've mentioned before, sadly, I'm straight edged and haven't touched alcohol in several years and have never been drunk. No, I'm just incapable of holding the same hours of others and still functioning correctly. But it becomes all the harder when you realize that this is before the insomnia kicks in.

Suddenly, thanks to extreme sleep deprivation, sleeping to noon potentially becomes sleeping to 2 or 3 in the afternoon. Once, when my ability to communicate with the outside world was cut off for a period of time (the virus known as Windows), I found myself sleeping all the way from sunrise to sunset (winter though, so not THAT impressive) after something to the tune of 54 hours without sleep.

This could be why my first real attempt at a short story involved a vampire hunter and why I've always secretly wanted to move to a city that has a vibrant nightlife readily accessible through a 24/7 public transit system.




However, due to recent events, I need to start getting back to sleep at "normal" hours. I have to take care of some kids for a few months and make sure they have a stable life despite the fact their mother will be in Afghanistan and their father will be...only god knows where. I guess I'm in a vicious circle: worries preventing sleep, lack of sleep creating more worries.

Truthfully...I don't know if I can do it again. I'm terrified of having to do it again, especially now that all of the people who helped me last time have died. I don't know if I'm strong enough for it. It's hard enough waking up while the sun is still up, having to do it with a couple screaming toddlers is going to be really rough. But my family needs me to do it and I can't tell them that I'm not feeling up to it. My sister's going off to war and she needs someone to take care of her kids for her.

But at least venting it somewhere has made me feel tired again. I'll go back to bed now, put my head down and hope for the best. Funny enough, despite my complaining, I'm still going to do it. I can't tell them that they're on their own in a situation like that, not without surrendering my rights to call myself human...



Sweet dreams, see you at noon.

Paper Cranes

So, I was going to update on the next step of BS with writers, and I still will, but in the meantime, I have a personal update that I figured was amusing and required attention.

Today I got a rejection letter.

Now this in itself isn't uncommon and I'm totally cool with the concept of it. Aside from bad timing, it was almost expected and I'm happy to send this story that was rejected somewhere else. But as I stared at the form letter they sent me, I came to wonder one thing: What do I do with it?

I mean, everyone has some sort of tradition with their rejection letters, be it ignore it, throw it away, or keep it as a trophy like some sort of masochistic big game hunter that only hunts for the sport of hurting themselves. They just kind of take pictures of the gashes and scars the lions, tigers, bears and Dick Cheney leave on them. Hell, Stephen King reportedly kept all of his rejection letters on a nail until he ran out of room. So the question comes...how do I deal with mine? I used to burn them when I was younger and before getting serious, but how do I deal with them now that I'm a little more mature (very little, mind you)?



There we go.

Legend has it that if you were to fold a thousand of these little bastards, you get a wish. So, despite not being superstitious, for the sake of amusing myself and having a joke to tell others...I figure being able to gather a thousand rejections and then wishing to become a world renowned author or being able to do that before I get a thousand rejections equals a win-win scenario for me! So hey, let's do this thing!

My first one was a little ugly, but it still looks like a crane. I figure I'll get better with time. Though I made a vow to myself to get published in a big way before I get good at folding the things. I imagine that I'll pick it up faster than someone picks me up. Still, it's good to have something to score yourself against.

However...



If I get that good, I'm screwed.

Inherent BS #1: Writers Part 2: "Writers are Unstable"

So the second aspect of BS in the general perception of writers both inside and out is that they're naturally unhinged or on the brink of some horrible fate. It's not even strictly outside the writing community, writers buy into this one too from time to time. And really, who can blame them? There's been enough history of big names going out of whack and enough experiences in personal chaos to make anyone start to believe it. As many a wannabe writer has said to me (including when I talk to myself), "I start to understand why so many writers drink".

Still, this issue has two polar opposite positions with equal levels of BS to them.


The Outsider's Perspective


So, we all know the story. A writer is working on The Great American Novel everyone likes to believe they'd someday create. But along the way he has a severe case of writer's block.


And it doesn't help that he has to take care of a kid. Either it's his own kid or the demon spawn of someone else. Takes so much time and energy, even when you get a chance to think you can't think anymore because you're so exhausted that it's starting to drive you a little crazy. Sometimes you wonder if maybe you should strangle the little prat and just get it over with.


But no, no, it's the writing that's making him suffer, not the kid. It haunts him, he's been stuck on that one damn page for days on end and he just can't get past it. All he does all day is type out random gibberish to fill in that blank space that keeps taunting him, laughing at him. If he could, he'd stab it in the face, if it had a face. Damn it, why doesn't it have a face?!


But wait, he suddenly has an idea. Yeah, a great idea that will make everything so much better.


It's time to go on vacation! Everyone feels better on vacation! Maybe then you'll stop standing over the kid while he sleeps holding that pillow so tightly. Though sometimes that does feel like a good idea...yeah, maybe it's time to go thro- Wait, wait, haha, no, I see what you did there. Vacation it is!


Unfortunately, when he gets there, the writer's block still doesn't quite go away. That damn page keeps taunting him. Damn faceless bastard...


And then, a breakthrough! He finally realizes exactly what will make everything all better!


Of course, people don't quite appreciate the scope of his genius...


But he can't stop now! He's had a breakthrough and, damn it, he's going to follow through on it!


And that's how it is. Writers are inherently unstable people who are on the brink of snapping at any moment without much warning. After all, they're usually drug addicts, alcoholics or ragingly eccentric lunatics living on the fringe of society. Stephen King had a drug problem, Jules Verne wrote whole stories drinking wine laced with cocaine and there's a long standing rumor that Mary Shelley was high on opium when she started thinking about raising the dead. So, of course, they're all drugged out maniacs on the verge of nerd-roid-rage, right? Sooner or later they'll hurt themselves or someone around them and they're going to end up either dead or chase away everyone around them with their crazy behavior.

It is true that there's a strange level of suicide among some of the more well known writers and some more interesting stories of outlandish deaths. No one's quite sure what killed Edgar Allan Poe, having been found completely delirious and wearing clothes that didn't belong to him before dying in a hospital. But to make his death even more epic you have to realize that the theories right now list the likes of "rabies" and "kidnapped to vote". The man died as he lived, bat-shit crazy.

But then the perception is that they're whiners who don't want to work hard and are just full of themselves and what they do. But really, is that fair to assume? This perception stems from that idea that it's so easy anyone can do it. But as I covered before, that's not true.

So, are they validated? Eh, no more than anyone else. Though telling them that requires you ween them off their own flavor of BS.

Writer's Perspective

Writing is the hardest thing EVER. If anyone ever doesn't like it then you would just DIE. Because they're not rejecting your writing or your style, they're rejecting YOU. After all, when you write you're having to use the things from your personality, your opinions and your life to construct a story that other people will read. It's not like you just threw random words on the paper, no, you put your soul into it. And if they read the things you wrote, the things you put so much of yourself into, then decide they don't like it...it only makes sense they don't like you, right?


Wow, lost perspective pretty fast there, didn't we?

Typical neurotic writer is like that. They fall into this death spiral of self loathing, insecurity and fear of rejection. When asked what people feared most in a poll a few years ago, death was #2 on the list of things people most fear. What was #1? Public speaking. We, the human race, are not wired for communication to a large number of people at once. And yet, writers try to speak to millions of people and the rest of eternity.

So we already know from the moment we begin that we just might be severely creative masochists. It gets rougher too because you look out there and not only are you struggling to write something that people will like but you're being told you're in a field where everyone fails. Also, getting into the industry is nearly impossible. When you do get published you wont make any money and everyone in the world thinks they can do your job better than you can and that you're just milking it for attention.

Ouch.

Writers are a bit neurotic and there's plenty of reason for them to feel the way they do. But self-destructing is far from the way to go. Yeah, some of the greats were either junkies, drunks or suicidal, but that doesn't mean you should be. Most of those people became greats because they channeled the darkness into their work, fighting it off or embracing it and turning it into something awesome. Sure, it doesn't always work, but when the job does pay off, we get a great reward for our efforts.

On the other hand, when it doesn't pay off, you end up with a few options. Some of them happen to quit, walk away and never look back. Some failed writers keep plugging away at it with hope that they'll break through. But, of course, others give into the darkness, get hooked on some form of narcotic and start putting that masochistic creativity to work in figuring out how to end it all.


So your book only sold two copies. So no one understood the underlying message of your work and called it shallow. So the one person you based a character on not only doesn't recognize that it's based on them but tells you that they're completely impossible to relate to. In the end, it could be worse.



After all, the rest of life is out to get you too.

Inherent BS #1: Writers Part 1: "It's Easy!"

So, after what I think was a successful stint of regular posting, I came to realize I should have always fallen back on my strengths. You see, I have long been and always will be a master of BS. Not just laying it out, but also identifying it. That's practically what I did before with the New Sci-fi posts. It's a useful skill to have, being able to tell people something completely fabricated with such conviction that they'll believe it while still being able to tell when someone else is doing the exact same thing. I could have been a politician were I to have had sufficient brain damage. But for now I'm simply a guy with intact gray matter and enough time on my hands to point out other BS.

Ironically, after that statement, an idea I got from someone else.

I was asked to submit a bio of myself to the anthology I got into. Keep it under 100 words and tell us about yourself. Wow, they managed to find my kryptonite so effectively. I'll admit, I've been putting it off because I really don't know what to say about myself in short form since, as far as I'm concerned, there's nothing interesting about me. Really, all I've got is:

"I'm a writer!"

But just that in itself got me thinking about the inherent BS involved in just about everyone who calls themselves or considers themselves a writer. In one way or another, we all have a touch of BS in our lives. In fact, for the unsuccessful or rookie writers, there's three clean cut categories of our BS. Let's take a look at these, shall we?

#1) "Anyone can do this."



Not long ago I was watching a report on a cable news program about the "99ers", the people who couldn't draw on unemployment anymore because they've been unemployed for longer than 99 weeks. And during this report they interviewed someone who was a 99er himself. There wasn't anything particularly wrong with the guy, in fact he seemed pretty decent, but when they introduced him there was a posting of a little bio for him on the side of the screen to explain who he was. Under "current employment" it listed "freelance writer".

"WTF," I said to my imaginary friends in the television, "nothing in your work history suggests you'd have anything to write about!"

That's how it tends to happen too. When the recession first kicked in I saw a lot of little studies and reports on the sudden upswing in people trying to get their writing published. That's right, once people lost their regular jobs, everyone decided they needed to start writing. After all, Stephanie Meyer made millions and millions of dollars and everyone reads Harry Potter even if they have no kids are are in their 50s. Writing is a gold mine! And hey, everyone knows how to write, right?



Surprisingly, no. Most people I've seen who've jumped on the "writing is easy" bandwagon have been borderline illiterate. But even if you were to scrub out the idiots you still have a surprising number of people out there who think that it's an easy way out. When I first started calling myself a writer (mind you, before I actually knew what the hell I was really doing, so, I suck too), I was the only one I knew who was "a writer". Now, some years later, I'm one of six I know that has jumped onto the writing bandwagon and at least one of them has stated quite openly "if people I know can do it, so can I!"

Why is it so damn common? Because everyone in the world thinks that writing in a language they know to construct a story people would like is as simple as knowing what you like and being "original". In a society where everyone is given the impression that they're special and unique, everyone thinks their voice is perfectly suited to the world of professional writing. So hey, everyone claims to be one when they've got nothing else to fall back on. After all, we're all beautiful snowflakes.

Except, you know, you're not...



However, I understand the need to do something, anything to try to make your existence count again when purpose has been taken away. I just don't think anyone should approach a new direction in their lives with the assumption that anyone can do it. Maybe it isn't the right direction for you. After all, what if I approached your regular job and said that I could do it as well as you could, maybe even better, despite having absolutely no experience at it?

There was a study some time ago that said anyone who is truly great at what they do can claim to have had at least 10,000 hours worth of practice at their skill. If you've had 2 hours, you're not ready yet. And then people wonder why the statistics for the number of people to try to be a writer but fail is so damn high. It's not because it's a tougher than normal industry. It's because so many people believe it's easy! (See what I did there?)

If you really want to be a writer, there's no substitution for study, practice and perseverance. And if you put in those things and you really stick with it, you wont need to claim the title anymore. On the other hand, if you're not able to do that and you were hoping that writing was the Mickey Mouse coursework of life, well...there's other options out there.



Sometimes we could all use a session of punching ourselves in the face.