The Meander

A couple of weeks ago I finished reading The Man Who Died Twice, by Richard Osman. I think it’s book 2 of his Thursday Murder Club series, but I didn’t read book 1.

(I actually have done this multiple times on accident and I kinda like starting on book 2…?)

(Also I picked it out from the library completely because he was on Taskmaster.)

It was a really fun read, but one of the things I loved about it - and about all novels, really - is “the meander.” Where the characters thoughts just kinda wander around, or even actions in the story happen that don’t really have a major relevance to the plot, but it’s just fun and you learn more about the people and you feel like you’re really connecting with them.

Sometimes I get caught up in the “modern” take of trimming everything down to racecar efficiency. It was good to remind myself that I enjoy the Meander.

Study Question: What do YOU think of “the meander”? Do you read them? Skip them? Are there books that do it too often? Are there genres that don’t do it enough?

REVIEW AND THOUGHTS: Novelist as a Vocation - "Are Novelists Broad-minded?"

This is my blog post series on NOVELIST AS A VOCATION by Haruki Murakami. I'm documenting my thoughts on each of the essays and the things I've learned about myself and my process.

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"Are Novelists Broad-minded?"

Murakami's first essay opens up with the idea that he does not have any fear about new novelists entering the field, that he welcomes them with open arms because he feels that novels are not a zero-sum game, and ultimately writing a novel is a difficult thing and deserves his respect. And at this point in the essay, I'm following along pretty well.

And then it takes a turn I wasn't expecting (sasuga, Murakami-sensei). He writes:

"The way I see it, people with brilliant minds are not particularly well suited to writing novels."

I'm sorry, what? I mean, "brilliant mind" is one of those terms that is thrown about with all the great novelists. But Murakami continues to explain that one does need a certain level of intelligence and education, but, he says:

"[...] anyone with a quick mind or an inordinately rich store of knowledge is unlikely to become a novelist. That is because the writing of a novel, or the telling of a story, is an activity that takes place at a slow pace. "

"[...] Someone whose message is clearly formed has no need to go through the many steps it would take to transpose that message into a story. All he has to do is put it directly into words - it's much faster and can be easily communicated to an audience. [...]The listener will slap his knee and marvel, "Why didn't I think of that?" In the final analysis, that's what being smart is really about.

In the same vein, it is unnecessary for someone with a wealth of knowledge to drag out a fuzzy, dubious container like the novel for his purpose."

This. Hit me. So. So. Hard.

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I have a lot going on in my life. I know I'm not alone in that, but I have to list it all out so you can understand where I'm coming from.

I have four kids and a wife, all with their own needs from me. I want to be a good husband and a good father, so I won't ignore them. I spend time with them. More importantly, I spend time thinking about how I can fulfill those roles better for each of them.

I work as an administrator in public education. It's a stressful job, but it's also one I care about. I spend time doing the job, but I also spend a lot of time thinking about the job, even when I'm not there.

I have to take care of the dog, because I'm the only one who will walk her consistently.

I have a podcast to schedule, record, edit, and maintain.

And there's other aspects of my life (like anyone's) that are complex and time consuming and generally a hindrance to doing creative work.

There's not a lot of time in my day to write. In fact, time management and time optimization is kind of obsessive for me. You only have to go look at blog posts from July and August of 2022 to see that.

But I'm also able to keep all these things (and more) balanced because I'm a really fast thinker. I can process information and accomplish stuff, generally speaking, faster than most people I work with or know. If I couldn't, I would've given up all this stuff a long time ago by necessity.

But because this is such a valuable skill in my day-to-day life, I somehow concluded that I needed to do all my creative work the same way - faster, better, more brilliant, more efficient. And I was seduced by some ideas and some writing communities - from the generally harmless NaNoWriMo to groups like 20 book to 50K, which said that if you can write and publish 20 books you could generate 50,000 in passive income. This was a group that used phrases like "lowest viable product" - meaning "what's the crappiest novel you can write and still get away with it."

So I trained, and copied, and outlined, and regimented and tried to get my brain to churn out the highest quality story I could in the shortest possible amount of time.

I was trying to do what Murakami is saying is impossible.

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Murakami concludes his observations that novels are a bad way to communicate ideas by writing:

"An extreme way of putting it is that the novelists might be defined as a breed who feel the need, in spite of everything, to do that which is unnecessary."

I've talked about this before, but I've tried to quit writing. Twice. It didn't stick. I have to do it. And, it turns out, I have to do it the way I've always done it. By the seat of my pants, in a meandering, inefficient way where I barely know what's going to happen next. And then I will rewrite it. And rewrite it. And rewrite it. And then eventually there might be something worthwhile at the end.

Because that's the only way I've ever really finished something and felt very proud of it. And it was the only way I've had the most fun.

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This essay really made me have to go back and have a hard look at myself, and to realize that the parts of my brain that make me effective in so many arenas is not the same one that will make me effective in novel writing. It made me accept what I had been trying to reject and reform.

I got the book on December 1. I read this somewhere between the 2nd and the 4th.

By December 13th, I was already back at writing my newest novel.

These essays have been gold, but if nothing else, this first one would have been worth the cost.

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Study Questions: Do you agree with Murakami’s assertion that a novel is an inefficient container for ideas?

How do the quoted lines make you feel about your own work?

Intentional Practice, (Part 2!)

A brief history.

Bored and inspired, I wrote my first novel when I was 15. It was Final Fantasy VII smashed together with Legend of Zelda and Star Wars. It was pretty bad.

I wrote a bunch of fanfiction and RP posts after that.

In 2007, I decided to write for real. I wrote another novel. I wrote it again. I wrote it again. I knew I had to get better, but I didn't know how, and I knew I wasn't using any of the intentional practice methods I had become so familiar with when I was in music and martial arts.

Writing for Dummies.

No, I didn't actually use "Writing for Dummies." I used "The Secrets" by Michael A. Stackpole.

Yeah, that one. The one that wrote all the Rogue Squadron books.

Back in the 00s, he had a newsletter called "The Secrets" that was all of his writing advice. I bought the back catalogs and then subscribed to the newer issues. I think the last one I got was volume 121. I don't know if he still makes them or not.

I read all 121 one of these things. It was great! It had all of the basics down on how to think of constructing a book, how to construct chapters and characters and worldbuilding. I still use his "blitzkrieg characterization" method and still adhere to his rule that a chapter should be between 2,500 and 3,000 words long (though sometimes I fudge it and go to 2,000.)

But as Uncle Iroh says, wisdom from only one source becomes stale. It was a great introduction to having an orderly way of approaching writing, but I knew I had to grow past it.

I can't remember the exact order, but I know after that I read The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp, On Writing by Steven King, and then a bunch of articles by Ray Bradbury which had particular generalizations on how to write (read one essay, one short story, and one poem a day and write one short story a week.) I read the advice from Vonnegut (the 8 rules and his 6 story shapes.) I read a book about NaNoWriMo written by the creator(s?) of NaNoWriMo. I read portions of Hero of a Thousand Faces, but honestly that thing is DENSE.

I read pretty much every blog post I could find on writing advice back in the day. I absorbed all that was out there in the world and tried it all out. I tried the Snowflake Method. I tried the 30 Day Method. I tried the 5 Step Method.

But all this stuff is general. They're broadstrokes of how to do things, or ways to organize your thoughts. It doesn't really teach you how to directly improve on particular skills.

So I just started making my own up.

Practice in Front of An Audience

Andy J. Pizza's Creative Pep Talk talks a lot about practicing your craft in front of an audience. Of course, he didn't exist in that format back in the 00s, so I kinda stumbled into it. I found a place to practice.

A Naruto RP board.

Yep. Naruto.

It's been deleted, which is too bad because I had a lot of stuff written on there, but it was a good place to write a lot and have fun. It was prose-based, so no rules, no stats, etc. If there was a "real" battle, a judge would be assigned to determine if someone went too far in their writing of damage, etc.

As far as I know, though, I was the only one on there that was trying to write and publish books. Most were on there for fun, so I was a lot better than a lot of people. That meant I never had a shortage of people that wanted to write with me, but it also meant I had a lot of people asking me how to improve. But they didn't want Vonnegut's 8 rules, they wanted to know how to write their combat sequences more vividly or how to make more interesting characters. I didn't really know how, I just sort of did it.

So I had to systemize what I was doing so I could teach it to other people.

Teaching someone else is the best way to refine what you do. I wasn't even thinking of going into teaching yet, but I really enjoyed the process.

I did a video/stream a while back on Obvious + Anti-Obvious. This was invented from this time period, when I was trying to explain how to come up with more interesting RP characters.

I went through my Dropbox and I found a bunch of graphics I made to help people improve. I had a battle chart on how to write a battle when the enemy is stronger, weaker, or the same strength as you AND how to write it if the enemy is taking the battle seriously vs non-seriously.

I found a flow-chart I made on how to backwards plot.

I had a rule called "Always the Third Option" where whatever I was thinking of a particular plot options that the third one I made was the best one.

I also did the "52 week project," which is based on Bradbury's advice. I challenged everyone to write a short story based on a prompt every week. I can't remember how far I got - I think I got into the 30s? For some reason, my old Dropbox only has three saved on it. I wonder why I saved those three.

Concluding the Past

I've been working on this post for a few days now, going through all of my old notebooks, trying to find other drills I did. I can remember some, but I didn't keep very good records of stuff. Some of that is probably for the best - I need to be working on new things, not rehashing old ones. I will say that one of the biggest constants in my notebooks is the use of freewriting, which is probably something that merits its own post at some point.

In the meantime, though, I'm grateful for all the work I did in the past, and I all the work I've done to get here. I'm excited to see what my newest methods produce.

Intentional Practice (Part 1!)

The first phase in my re-dedication to massively improving my writing ability is to start practicing again. I invented my series of practice methods about 10 years ago (from 2007-2011 was my most intense years of practice), so I’m re-using some old drills, using new ones, and being very analytical about how I improve. I’ll be sharing both what I used to do and what I’m doing now in the next few blog posts.

Today is about my first phase of my current intentional practice.

First, what is intentional practice?

The most useful and most useless advice you can get about writing is “just write a lot.” Because, it’s true, if you don’t write a lot, you can’t get better at writing. And if you’re kinda new at it and you don’t have the “magical million words” that supposedly “makes you good”, then you do need to put in the brute force effort of stringing words together.

But if you’re trying to get much better much faster, blindly writing won’t do it. Writing isn’t just one thing - it’s a lot of decisions that you’re making simultaneously while drafting, a lot of different skills that you’re using at one time. If you don’t have those individual skills refined, then your ability to write is always going to be hindered by your weakest skills.

A lot of complex skills are like this: music, martial arts, etc. Those of course are two areas that I underwent extensive training, so when I was first trying to improve my writing ability, I used a lot of the practice concepts that I learned from those arenas.

So, intentional practice is noting your weak areas and intentionally taking steps to improve them.

The problem of intentional practice and writing

It’s easy to intentionally practice in music because the skills are easily defined (theory, dexterity, scales, breath control, tone, intonation, interpretation, etc). The same with martial arts (striking, grappling, leverages, pressure points, weapons, etc.)

It’s less clear with writing.

Yes, there are some general concepts that everyone agrees upon as being important. But the wonderful thing about writing is that there is so much variation in how it can be done. One person’s purple prose can be another person’s sweeping descriptions that carry them off into a new world. One person’s overly-complex info dump can be another person’s ideal worldbuilding.

Beyond that, there aren’t always a lot of systemized ways of improving these things. I’ve read a bunch of writing books, took a writing class, hired a developmental editor…and nobody has a “this is what you should do” checklist of ways to practice. So when I say I “invented” it, it’s not that I came up with all the drills that I’ll talk about, but I did try to organize them into a system based on my past training AND the intervening ten years of working in education where I focus on how people learn and improve.

My current “step 1.”

The first step is to identify your weak areas. I kinda know what they are, but if I’m going to be intentional, I need to be systematic. So my current step 1 is to reread Heart and Soul Fist and Spirits of Summer and analyze them. I’ve organized the analysis into three major areas with subcategories.

PLOT, with the subcategories of “Tension” and “Pacing.’

CHARACTER, with the subcategories of “Dialog” “Mannerisms” and “Descriptions”

SETTING, with the subcategories of “Descriptions” “Worldbuilding”

And THEME (which will be its own post later).

Then, I’m reading Heart and Soul Fist chapter by chapter and taking notes on what I did well and what needed improvement, just any general thoughts I have. Then I score myself in those categories, on a scale of 1-4 (based on the latest thinking in Mastery and Equity Grading that I’m a massive believer in).

1 = Not proficient

2 = Approaching proficiency

3 = Proficient

4 = Mastery

I mark all my scores down and then average them out (which, averaging isn’t really that useful in grading theory these days, but I’m curious to see what the ultimate average of the averages will be at the end of the book and if it matches with how I feel about it.) Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like.

A chapter scorecard.

I’m then recording all these scores into a master table.

The overall record of scores.

Once I’m done that, I’ll do the same for Spirits of Summer and compare all the scores and see if A) I improved from one book to the next and B) what areas are my weakest and what I need to practice on.

Next time, I’ll detail some other things I’m doing (like the Hyperbolic Write Chamber) and talk about my routines in the past. If you have any specific questions, though, let me know!

Study Questions:

1. Have you ever intentionally practiced anything? What area was it? What lessons did you gain from it?

2. In general, how do you feel about claims that people need to “write a million words” or “spend 10,000 hours” to become an expert at something?

Rebellion

About 5 years ago I ran into a concept called “The Four Tendencies” by writer Gretchen Rubin. The idea was that each person can generally fall into a category of how we respond to external and internal directives. Her observations were that some people, for example, were really good at following directions when somebody else gave it to them, but really bad at it if they gave it to themselves. If you can figure out which of those tendencies you were, you could try to hack your own personality into being more productive, or happier, or well balanced or whatever.

I should note that this is not based in any sort of real psychological research. She's not a doctor or a therapist or anything like that.

Anyway, when I took the tendency test and read the articles associated with it, I came up as “The Rebel.” The idea of the rebel is that they have difficulty listening to the commands of anything outside themselves, and anything inside themselves. Basically, the moment somebody tells me something to do, I don't want to do it. At least, not in the exact way that I was told how to do it. According to Rubin, there's an independent streak in the rebel, so even if they're completely willing to do the task they are given, either by others or by themselves, there's always going to be a tendency to do one part of it just slightly different, or slightly their own way.

I was very fascinated by this angle for a while, but then I saw a real psychiatrist and started thinking about other things.

Still, I wonder if there's something to it. I've been trying to get back to writing my Persona 4/ 5 fanfiction story, and I just couldn't. I was in a part in the overall arc that I didn't really have a strong idea for when I first came up with the thing. It's a big gap in the story, and this happens sometimes to me while I'm writing novels too. When that happens, I just have to buckle down and outline a bunch of stuff until I figure out how to glue the previous sections in the next section that I already know how to do.

So I spent about an hour and a half one morning going through all the lead up, figuring out where I wanted to go next, and then outlining it. That was exactly what I needed to get back on track, and I've been regularly posting on that story again.

And then this morning, I wrote a portion of the story that was not something I outlined, or something that I had planned for. I was struck with the idea at a whim, and just started typing it out.

I'm happy with what I wrote, and I totally posted it, but I still found myself going “Why am I like this?” Why did I spend all that time carefully outlining every single step, only to throw it completely off by the third time I sat down to write?

Now, as I'm walking the dog, I started thinking about that Four Tendancy thing again, and wonder if there is a part of me that has to rebel against what I'm told, even if I'm the one that told myself. It's an extremely annoying habit , and one of the reasons, most outlining systems don't work for me. The minute I've decided how a story supposed to go, I feel compelled to not do it in that way. Sometimes that's a good thing, resulting in a really interesting, creative twists from what I was going to do. Or sometimes it just results in me not doing anything on that project at all.

There's always been a piece of me that loves the improvisational. I mean I was a jazz major after all, and the podcast is basically a large exercise and improvisation. I used to be a 100% "pantser” as a writer, but then I got frustrated with how long it took me to get anything done. I've tried to become more and more outline base, more on schedule, on track, productive.

But maybe I'm just delaying the inevitable. If I'm just going to buck every outline I make, is there a point in doing it? I don't know.

The Creative Pep Talk podcast the other day was talking about Taika Watiti’s tendency to write something, then leave it behind for a few years, then go back and tackle it again. I used to write like that. My rule was right, a novel, write another one, then go back and edit the first one. Heck, Heart and Soul Fist was the result of me going back and finding a story I had written 7 years prior.

So is that the true methodology of who I am as a creative person? Output output output whatever comes to mind, toss it in the metaphorical drawer, and then bring it back to life later?

Is it better to embrace your natural tendency, or train and mold yourself into something different?