On Stuckness

I’m really excited about my next novel, The Unaccountable Death of Derelict Frobisher. It’s my best work to date—very funny, very deep, very me—and friends who have heard bits are figuratively hounding me for more. The draft is probably 85% complete. Problem is, I’ve got no idea what words to write next.

It’s a complex and multi-layered problem, made worse in some ways by the fact that I don’t really put much stock in writer’s block. I’ve always been of the mindset that plumbers plumb, coders code, and writers write, and if you’re so precious about your writing that you’re willing to let a little thing like not knowing what words to write next stop you, you’re at best an amateur, at worst a self-indulgent dilettante.1

So I guess I’m an amateur or, as the case may be, a dilettante, because I’ve been largely putting this problem off for months now, busying myself with other jobs that are definitely very important and not an excuse to avoid Frobisher.

Some of the reasons I’m stuck include:

  • I wrote all the fun easy parts first, which means all I’ve got left are the tricky complicated bits
  • Most of what remains is the brilliant climax where everything comes together, all the threads get resolved, and the clever twists and solutions occur, and that’s all really tricky to figure out
  • In my absorption with the aforementioned fun easy bits, I never really exactly figured out who the villains are or what they did when or why. Turns out this is a useful thing to know as you wrap up a story.
  • Existing draft is very complex—lots of scenes in various states of incompleteness, of which an as-yet-undetermined subset won’t be in the final draft—so it’s often tricky to figure out quite concretely which bits to start putting more words onto

Here are some things I’ve been doing to start getting unstuck:

  • Actually sit and think about it.
    • Turns out I overestimate the value of vaguely letting my subconsciously allegedly brood on an issue. You could say I’m mentally leaving the dishes to soak for four months. Focused thought and effort move things forward way more quickly. (Surprise!)
  • The kitchen timer method, in which you do nothing but write your work-in-progress or write in your journal for a set time. I wrote more about it here.
    • So far I’ve spent almost all of the time in my journal, and it’s starting to lead to productive breakthroughs. I think it’s useful to give myself permission to spend writing time on productive journaling instead of just adding manuscript word count.
  • Asking “What’s the next question I need answered?”
    • For example, in the final climactic showdown, I knew Hastily Dobbs and his people would thwart the Society for Entrepreneurial Insurgency using some sort of genius inter-planar cleverness. But I wasn’t sure what the cleverness was.
    • On further digging, though, I realized I wasn’t even sure what they were thwarting.
    • That led me to ask what the SEI is actually doing in this scene.
    • That led me to ask why they’re doing…whatever they’re doing. What’s their overarching goal? Once I answered that question, the knot began to unravel.

In summary: Trying to intuit my way through four layers of ignorance at once is ineffective. Not even trying is even more ineffective. Put differently, work works.

As it happens, this neatly resolves my impending dilettantism. The key to not being an uncommitted amateur is to commit and do the work, even if, in a periodic tight spot, the work consists of figuring out what words to write instead of writing more words.


1 From the German Dillentante, or “pickle-aunt,” an insult common among the 18th century pickle barons of the Weimar, implying that the insultee’s pickle-making was of a caliber comparable to a doddering aunt who, having canned some gherkins for pickling, quickly forgot which jars had been put up in what years, resulting in pickles of highly inconsistent quality and, in many cases, unacceptable mushiness.

My experimental new rules of blogging

1. Post most days.
2. Don’t spend more than half an hour on a post.
3. Don’t go meta and write about how you’re going to blog or what you’re going to say or what new blogging approach you’re about to try. Just do it.*
4. Pick a title after you write the post.
5. Don’t make a dumb clickbaity title.
6. For the love of God, don’t post about yet another system you’re trying until you’ve actually stuck with it for a couple weeks at the very least.
7. You can break any rule about 10% of the time.

 


Note from past Ben, circa 2/20/17:

Rule 6 also says this post should never have existed.

The best I could do to get around my compulsive need to share this dumb new thing–which my smart brain objectively knows to be a dumb new thing that has a 7% chance of lasting more than two days, but my dumb brain absolutely has to share with the world right now omgz–was to schedule the post to go up two weeks in the future.

The issue with this workaround is that if, as I fear and partly expect, I have merrily forgotten all about this Glorious New System by Thursday, you’ll all still see this ill-conceived nonsense in two weeks. If, on the other hand, I’m still touching my blog most days two weeks from now, I may at that point actually remember to take down this post which, however, will at that point have a much more legitimate reason to exist.

Sigh. Brains. Can’t live with ’em. Can’t live without ’em.


 

* Regarding this post, see Rule 7.

My instant kombucha recipe for non-health-nut non-hipsters

(Skip to the recipe.)

Ok, so I’m once again in the throes of my pseudennial kombucha cravings, but I have a major problem, which is my brain. I have the kind of brain that latches onto something as the-omg-best-thing-evar-maybe-the-only-thing-I’ll-ever-want-again-omg-omg! for, say, three days, and then forgets about it.

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Worst. Shepherds. Ever.

I’m also frugal enough, if not wanting to pay three to four dollars per bottle for multiple bottles a day counts as frugal, to–well, not want to pay $3-4/bottle for…you get it. It adds up.

So I decide (again) to start brewing my own kombucha. Luckily I have some infrastructure (in the form of seventy dozen bajillion Mason jars) from previous episodes. But the issue is that from the moment I brew a huge jar of sweet tea and dump a disgusting object into it, it’s going to be two weeks or so before I get that first sip of sweet, sweet (by which I mean sour, fizzy, wretched, yet curiously compelling) kombucha. I expect you’ve spotted the problem. Two weeks, in brain years, is several lifetimes. In two weeks I will momentarily look up from my new all-consuming obsession with, say, fold-expressions in Vim, and wonder why my basement lair is swamped in jars full of floaty things.

So I’m holding out hope (because I always do) that this time the desire will still be with me in two weeks, and I’m taking specific steps to establish a more sustainable kombucha-production pipeline, which will help, but in the meantime I have discovered a hack that gets me the kombuchonic goodness I want without making me wait. It is, in that sense, a sour and slightly gingery version of the American Dream.

This hack is only for people who actually just like kombucha and want to drink a lot of it. I have no idea what health benefits (or detriments) it may entail, and it will give you the opposite of purist/hipster cred. But it hits the spot while you’re waiting out your two weeks for the real stuff.

Instant (Mock?) Kombucha Recipe

  1. Brew black tea.
  2. Add sugar in a roughly 1:8 ratio (sugar:tea, not vice versa).
  3. Add kombucha SCOBY and a splash of kombucha from the starter batch.
  4. Whenever you want, pour yourself a glass of the partially-brewed results.
  5. To that glass, add a splash of apple cider vinegar.
  6. Add a few drops of lime juice.
  7. Add crushed ginger to taste.
  8. Optionally add sweetener, depending on how sour the original stuff was. And how sweet you like it, if any. (I happen to have some elderflower syrup at the moment, which I used because it’s fancy.)
  9. Drink.

Strictly speaking, steps 2-3 are probably optional. It seems weak tea with apple cider vinegar and whatever other flavors you feel like makes a decent flavoral substitute for kombucha, though I imagine you get better results by enhancing incomplete kombucha than by merely faking it altogether.

Experiment with other flavors. Let me know what you find. Please direct any hate mail to ben@bazinga.biz.

Some thoughts on prayer and if/when/why it works

My interaction with God has been a little anemic lately. On reflection, I’m finding some patterns that are probably at the root of this. Here’s what most of my conversation with God looks like lately:

  • vague spontaneous thanks for generally nice things
  • vague spontaneous requests for fairly specific (but unlikely) last-minute interventions, without much expectation or follow-up
  • vague requests for insight or guidance or help, without much time spent waiting/watching/listening for an answer
  • most critically, a tendency to ask for things that will get me out of having to care or engage

Now that I’m starting to pay attention, I’m remembering what I’ve learned in the past. God seems much more responsive, and more consciously present to me, when my communication with him is basically the opposite of those patterns. Specifically, I want to get back to communication with God that is:

  • Specific, not vague. My rule of thumb on this one: if God does what I’m asking, will I be able to tell? Similarly, when thanking God, I find it helpful to try to thank him for something I’ve never thanked him for before (even if it’s just a new phrasing/angle on a longstanding gratitude).
  • Intentional, not (just) spontaneous. Spontaneous is actually great, but it needs to be built on a history of real, focused communication. I tried this today by setting aside some time to talk with God about my to-do list, outstanding projects, daughters, wife, friends, and a few other issues that came to mind in the process. It was pretty abbreviated in form, but I’m already feeling the difference between proactively asking for God’s help with the things I care about and randomly winging a prayer his way if something looks like it’s about to go south.
  • Listening, not just asking. When I think about it, it’s so dumb when I ask God for guidance and then pay zero attention to what happens next. I’m trying to start acting like I think he might respond if I ask him something, and pause for a moment to see if I experience any noteworthy shifts in my attention and desires, new thoughts or ideas, or a new gut sense of what’s the wise or foolish way to proceed.
  • Willing to engage with pain, discomfort, effort, and sacrifice. This is the huge one. I typically haven’t been a fan of the aphorism that God helps those who help themselves (which, as far as I can tell, has no discernible connection to most actual Christian theology). That said, I’m realizing that there’s a profound difference between asking God to help me enter into beneficial sacrificial effort and asking God to help me dodge it.

To expand that last one a little, I’m realizing that a lot-a-lot of the times I ask God to help, it’s basically me trying to get out of having to do anything. Please calm my girls down (so that I don’t have to get up from my dumb phone game). Please make sure that panhandler gets something to eat (so that I don’t have to, because I really don’t feel like making eye contact this time). That sort of thing.

But that’s contrary to the whole heart of what I believe God’s doing in the world. The entire point is that Jesus (who was showing us exactly what God is like and how he works) entered straight into the center of the messy, dangerous, painful, complicated guts of the broken world, depending fiercely on God to give him everything he needed to get through it. He was the one who entered so deeply into the pain and depended so fully on God that he made it straight through death and out the other side, blazing the trail for the rest of us.

So if I’m following Jesus on the trail he has blazed, I should be walking straight into the heart of the pain and complication, exactly where I won’t be able to handle it, asking as I go that God keep giving me the strength to dig deeper in, the love I need for the people I meet there, the provision they (and I) still need even after I’ve given the shirt off my back, the forgiveness that lets me unjustly take the blame and stay quiet, the peace I need to enter the chaos without freaking out and giving up.

In sum, I should only be asking God to show up if I’m willing to be the body he shows up in.


PS – There’s a risk, after that glorious crescendo of self-sacrifice, to feel like you should go out and give everything you own and save everyone you see and take up every cause immediately all the way on the spot. Going back to the “listening” point, I’ve found great balance to this urge in the practice of asking God which people/needs/causes I should be serving and caring about at any given moment.

This lets me take on the ones that he directs me to and freely not worry about the rest, trusting that other people also serve him and he knows what will be the best, most beautiful, and most freeing way for each of us to join him.

Read Across America appearance at Chesapeake High

Yesterday I had the great good fun of appearing at Chesapeake High School in Pasadena, MD to give a talk with Bill on co-authoring to make a difference, where we read from our work, talked about our process and why we write, and answered questions from the students.

It was so lovely to meet creative, interesting, book-loving students and to share the fun (and, you know, the crippling insecurities and all) of writing. Thanks to Ms. Cvetic and the Book Club for all the time, energy, and heart you put into this event.

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A Productive Hubris Towers Work Day

Last Thursday Bill and I took most of the day to work on a couple upcoming projects, including planning the overview of Hubris Towers Season 2. It was absolutely delightful – just the sort of day I hope will one day constitute my actual full-time job.

We spent the morning embroiled in a proof-of-concept of a project about which I am not yet able to say much, except that:

  1. The proof of concept definitely proved the concept. This project has legs. At this point I’m pretty confident that it will happen, and if/when it does, it’s going to be great.
  2. We had 2 nice-ish microphones and 3 computers of varying age and no combination of computer and mic worked. Tech. Fail. But the show must go on, and we found a way to do a thing anyway.

After that fiasco-slash-smashing-success, we went out and got yummy shawarma from a food cart and took a walk around a grassy park in the sun–a rather surprising amount of sun for a February day, really–and talked about our production schedule for Season 2.

Season 1 was eight episodes varying in length from about 12,500 words to over 20,000–I forget the exact numbers. We’ve decided to make Season 2 six episodes of roughly 20k each. That gives us room to develop a full story in each episode and keeps the production schedule from stretching out too long.

We talked about a couple refinements to our process, too: mainly getting me a full clean outline before I start writing (instead of overlapping Bill’s outlining and my writing, as we often did in Season 1) and alerting Bill sooner when I start to diverge from his outline (as will happen from time to time) so that he can account for the changes as he continues to plot.

In the afternoon we retired to my basement headquarters to schedule details and talk plot in broad strokes. I don’t want to give any spoilers, so without going into too much detail I’ll just say that the compact high-rise golf course mentioned late in Season 1 makes a reappearance, we have some great character arcs in store, and both of us laughed and laughed as we talked it out.

Trying the Don Roos Kitchen Timer system

This week I’m trying out a new system of setting and tracking writing goals. More of a philosophy, in a way.

I think it’s called the kitchen timer system, as espoused and/or created by Don Roos, which I learned about because my wife was reading Lauren Graham’s book, which lays it out, and she showed it to me.

The basic idea is that each day you set a time goal for the next day, and you spend that much time with only two things in front of you: your journal and your work-in-progress (hereinafter WIP).

Turn off your Wi-Fi, turn your phone face-down and ignore it, don’t watch or listen to anything except music without words, and start to write.

You have two options. You can either work on your WIP, or, whenever you want and without recrimination, you can write about anything at all in your journal. When you get bored of journaling, you can go back to your WIP. When you get stuck on your WIP, you can go back to your journal. You can even sit and stare at your journal and/or WIP without writing if you want, as long as you don’t switch to anything else.

If you put in the time goal you set for yourself, you win. Simple as that.

Even more canny, if you don’t hit your time goal–and this is critical–you just move on. Take it as a sign that your goal wasn’t very realistic and set a shorter one for tomorrow. DO NOT set an even bigger goal to “make up for it” tomorrow.

It’s kind of genius.

In my experience, it’s almost impossible to journal or freewrite for a very long time at all without getting down to the roots of whatever emotional/intellectual/creative issues have me stuck or preoccupied. It’s also very hard, having gotten down to said issues, to journal or freewrite about them for very long without some sort of useful resolution or reframe emerging. And once my issues are resolved, I generally find the WIP writing easy and fun, even addictive.

This system is also great because it defuses the psychological risk inherent in high-stakes and/or high-intensity creative writing goals, especially those framed in functionally less actionable terms. If my goal is to write 1,000 words on my WIP, I’ll finish that in somewhere between half an hour and never, especially because the implicit goal is to write 1,000 good words, preferably 1,000 brilliant words.

Usually, if I can’t think of words that seem sufficiently brilliant, I’ll sit and think harder. More realistically, if I can’t think of words that seem sufficiently brilliant, I’ll play a dumb game on my phone or turn on a sitcom. Or both. (I’m a terrible person.) This method invites me, when I can’t find brilliant words, to just write whatever words, which I can always do.

That keeps me writing, trends toward resolution (and, eventually, a return to brilliance), and gives me a controllable win. All I have to do is stay there and not open any other things until my time’s up. Unlike being brilliant, that’s something I can simply decide to do, and my brain gets a lot more excited when I make the win about a concrete decision, not an unpredictable flash of insight (much less a thousand of them in a row).

Review: The Practice of the Presence of God

The Practice of the Presence of GodThe Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is one of those books I keep coming back to. You always think a book like this is just going to be boring and religious and helpful in a vegetables kind of way, but this one’s about a clumsy monk who worked in the clangabang monastery kitchens with everyone shouting for this and that, and still found such a simple pleasure in being with God in the middle of it that the set prayer times were at best no better and at worst a bit of a redundant bother.

The language is old-fashioned and may be a slog for some–he lived centuries ago, after all–but this is a delightfully refreshing reminder that we can keep going back to God any time, and that, religious systems and mystical complications aside, in the end it all comes down to doing everything out of love for (and in love with) God.

There are effective and ineffective ways to go about this, of course, and it’s mentioned several times that it took Brother Lawrence ten years of steady practice before it became totally natural, but as one who has at least occasionally experienced, like him, the need to “take measures” to cover up how gleefully overwhelmed I am by the nearness and kindness of God lest I start to freak the people around me out, I can attest that it’s going to be worth it.

If I could add one book to the Bible, this would be it. For real. Check it out.

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Review: How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My LifeHow to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life by Scott Adams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While this book is a little scattered both in format and subject material, it has some very helpful ideas about reframing your approach to life in ways that are likely to maximize your chances of success overall and your happiness even in the meantime.

Some of my big takeaways:

  • Arrange your life around processes, not goals. As you learn to routinize patterns that increase your energy level, skills, human connection, risk tolerance, etc. you’ll continually increase your chances of success while rarely having to power through big lifestyle changes on sheer willpower.
  • Learn to think of failure as a resource, not an outcome. Select and arrange your endeavors in a way that will result in useful gain even if the endeavor fails. This will free you up to try lots of things, fail freely, and in the process keep gaining new skills, connections, experience, etc., increasing the likelihood of success on future endeavors.
  • Best starting point is caring for your body. Energy levels (used kind of loosely to mean a mix of physical energy, optimism, and drive) are a linchpin to unlocking your capacity in most other areas. Learning to eat right (in enjoyable therefore sustainable patterns) will increase your tendency toward (enjoying therefore maintaining habits of) physical activity and fitness, which will tend to improve your mood, likeability, creative/productive capacity, and more, which will make it more likely that you will feel happy, try interesting things, enjoy and be enjoyed by other people, etc.
  • Tips and tricks. Some helpful specifics on conversational skills, developing sustainably healthy diet and exercise patterns, and more.

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