Schrodinger's Egg

Sculpted by M. Pena and sold by
 Windstone Galleries

Like most authors I know, I like to surround myself with odds and ends that inspire me when I write. And as I sat down to write this morning, I accidentally locked eyes with one of my favorite little pieces of inspiration. I purchased this ever-hatching egg from a vendor at the Alabama Phoenix Fest last year and it instantly earned a prized placement among the items already on my desk, ranging from dragonflies and signed Neil Gaiman novels to pirate ships and krakens.

When I found him, this little fella sat on a display shelf surrounded by gorgeous sculptures of dragons, cats, unicorns, and other mystical animals that were totally life-like. M. Pena, the artist, is a master of sculpture. But this simple egg, its inhabitant peeking out at me perpetually, called me more than any of the others.

Sure, the others were astounding gallery pieces and I probably could have written an entire book about one of those characters cast forever in stone. But this little guy.... he could be absolutely anything at anytime. He's the veritable Schrodinger's egg; until he hatches, he is a gargoyle, he is a dragon, he is a world-turtle, he is anything I can imagine him to be forever. Until he hatches, the possibilities are endless.

And that, my friends, is exactly what I love so much about sitting down to write the stories as they begin hatching in my mind. I always sit down with a clear picture of what I intend to transpire in this scene or that scene, yet it never fails that as my mind dictates one thing, my fingers begin typing another entirely. Some writers I know are Master and Commander of their stories; they can plot their course from beginning to end and seldom waver from the outline. I've never been one of those, even in writing short stories. I start with an idea, a mysterious egg, and begin writing just to see what hatches. It's the excitement in the discovery of what happens in the end that drags me back to my laptop whenever I can.

Though it seems that lately I haven't been back in this seat for that purpose often enough at all. This morning as I met his judgy orange eyes on beginning my day of writing, I'm pretty sure he said: "It's about time."

My pet egg, according to the website, is a gargoyle. But I won't believe it until he hatches. In the meantime, I think I'll call him Erwin.

The Disposable State

I’m breaking form a little today with my first non-writing blog in ages. But this is a topic that has been bothering me for a long, long time.

Photo from  loveyourbackyard.blogspot.com

Do you remember the days when making a big purchase meant making a lifetime investment? When even small purchases were quality construction and then cared for and well-maintained – that’s why we still have our grandparents’ furniture and dishes when our modern equivalents tend to be replaced on an average of less than 10 years. There was a time when it was unthinkable to not take pride in what you owned, and in taking pride you took care of it and extended the life of it as long as possible. It wasn’t that long ago that it was also unthinkable to hire a contractor without checking references, reputation, and qualifications. Especially not based simply because that contractor gave the cheapest price. That was when people knew what “You Get What You Pay For” really means. It was a warning to keep someone from making a poor investment, not a cheap grumble to make after the deed has already been done.

Not that long ago at all... But now we live in a world with so many options all vying for our attention that the focus has been switched to the cheapest option, even if it’s truly only cheaper in the short term. What happened to planning ahead, thinking ‘down the road,’ and preparing for the long term??

The reason this is bugging me right now is that I drive past examples of this every single day on the way to work. We live in a new neighborhood where construction is still ongoing, so the salesmen and other contractors still circle our new neighbors like vultures with offers of inexpensive home improvements like fences, gutters, etc. But right now it’s the fences that irk me the most. Imagine this...

Congratulations! You’ve just made a sizeable investment in the purchase of your brand new home! What’s your first big step? Maybe you should build a fence to keep your dog in and your neighbors out. But wait – do you know how to build a fence? Shucks, no. Hey, look - There’s a guy over there putting flyers on mailboxes that say he’ll beat any other price to build a fence, how convenient and cheap!

One year later... Take a drive through our neighborhood and see fence after fence already rotting because part of the cost savings they’d gotten was that the contractor didn’t stain or seal the cheap pine boards in any way. Oh, and where they didn’t cement the posts in and then didn’t even pack them tightly enough entire rows are starting to lean one direction or another. And because they only used two rows of support 2x4s and one cheap nail to hold the pine boards in each, boards are popping right off the nails everywhere you turn. Because of those cheap nails, rust is streaking down the wood because the nails aren’t even for decking. The bottoms are curling up because they were placed right on the ground because, hey, it’s easier to nail in place that way, right?

And the people who live in these nice new houses with fences that look 20 years old want to complain about the contractor they paid up front who suspiciously disappeared without giving them any kind of warranty on his work... But they’d just wanted a ‘for now’ fence at the time. It was cheap and it was good enough ‘for now,’ already thinking that they wouldn’t be in this house for more than 4 or 5 years. So why bother with it?

Why spend a good $3,000 on something that might only last you a couple of years before you have to spend almost the same amount just to keep it from falling down? And why don’t people ask themselves this before they throw the money AND resources away?

We have a fence, too. It was the first thing that Steven wanted to do, and within a couple months after he bought the house we were in the back yard getting ready with post hole diggers, cement, rot-resistant cedar fence boards, rust-resistant decking screws, and enough 2x4s for three support rows all of the way around. Not to mention many gallons of water-proofing stain. This part isn’t bragging on my part – Steven was the architect and his commitment to quality in everything he does is one of the many things I love about him. If he’s going to do something, he’s going to do it right. It took us a long time working on the weekends and after work some evenings, but because of taking the time and taking pride, we have a fence that will still look this good 20 years from now, and a prospective buyer will see that what we have done adds value.

The best part? Even though we used much higher-end materials, the total cost was cheaper than hiring a fly-by-night contractor because we did the work ourselves. And this year after we apply a new coat of stain to our beautiful fence, we’ll get to sit on the back patio and enjoy a nice glass of wine while we watch our neighbors replacing fence boards, propping up posts, and cursing the cheap and rep-less contractor they hired to do a cheap job... for doing a cheap job.

Steven, the handsome architect, building the frame.

One cold day in January, but we still installed two sections of fence boards
because we were so anxious to see the fruits of our labor

Not quite the finished product, but close! This is before
installing the lattice and staining.
  

Steven taught me so much about carpentry
during this project. We made a great team!

The Sit-Down-Shut-Up Method

Sit down and shut up.  No, no, I didn’t mean you. I meant me. This is my process, you see.

At least, it was.

I tend to be very easily distracted by just about anything; noises from outside, noises from inside, cats needing cuddles, sparkly motes of dust floating by the window (oh, look at that one!)... This has led to many challenges in finding a writing process that works for me. There have been a few iterations in the past involving everything from blaring Atari Teenage Riot or recorded heartbeats to timed brainstorming and word association games. Not surprisingly, most of these didn’t work. Let’s take a look at a few of my past attempts...

1.       The old Drown-Out-The-World method. It’s safe to call this one my default method with a few variations. This is what I always return to when nothing else I’ve tried has helped my sad level of focus. I’ve used white noise, thunderstorm sounds, loud repetitive rage music, trance music, non-vocal jazz, loud fans + music, and even some of the kooky alpha- wave beats from YouTube. The result? I just end up humming along and not writing. 

2.       The mind-focusing game method. This was one I picked up out of some forum that I thought might have merit. The idea is to start focusing on a problem or a strategy (anything from Free Cell to Risk) and let your brain naturally start weeding out distractions for you before your writing session begins. I’m sure it probably does work for some writers out there, but for me it just led to hours wasted because apparently strategy games are my digital crack.

3.       The cardio method. This one is pretty much exactly what it sounds like and it probably came from the same forum as the above failed method.  Basically I was supposed to do 20-30 minutes of any form of cardio and it was supposed to have a dual effect: Eliminate physical stress allowing me to mentally relax, and flush some unknown toxins (possibly the beer) from my blood stream to let me think more clearly and without distraction.  The problem? If I could make myself do cardio I’d still be in last year’s pants.

4.       The reward method. This was the short-lived method in which I tried rewarding myself with chocolate for a high word count. Although it resulted in a lot of words written, it also meant erasing entire crappy chapters that were hastily written in a desire for chocolately satisfaction. Incidentally, it also coincided with the worst acne break-out since my teens and probably a big part of the reason I still can’t get into last year’s pants.

5.       The punishment method. Even more short-lived, this one was probably the silliest and most desperate I’ve tried. Anytime I found myself getting off-track and distracted whilst writing, I had to hold my breath until I finished a sentence. All I really got out of this was a bunch of very short sentences and a few dizzy spells.

Sad, isn’t it? However, all of the failed attempts at finding my own personal writing process did help lead me to one major discovery: Dealing with the external distraction isn’t my problem. In fact, since I sat down to write this blog I’ve darted off on about 10 other tasks that somehow popped into my mind and are not even tangentially related to this blog. I’ve been checking Facebook, re-checking Facebook, researching a hand-held vacuum cleaner, checking my bank account to see if my utility payment posted, Googling for a picture of a hobo spider, etc. I just plain can’t control myself.

I always thought that “Sit down and shut up” was the first step to writing, but it turns out that this might be my first obstacle to writing. Sitting down and shutting up is apparently handing the reins over to my brain and giving it carte blanche to start spinning its wheels wherever it wanted to go. Sometimes it trips over a good story element on the way, but usually it’s more like trying to walk 5 dogs on 5 leashes who all want to go a different direction. 

So it was with this in mind that I tried the exact opposite approach when I got to a road block in my writing this time. I stood up, walked around, and talked to myself about the book for about twenty minutes. Loudly (thankfully Steven wasn’t home so his doubts about my sanity still haven’t been confirmed). In this twenty minutes of talking to walls, cats, and houseplants I managed to advance three plot lines, flesh out a character that was giving me trouble, and devise a solution to a complicated plot problem that needed a big finish. By the time I sat back down to write I was ready to do backflips in excitement and I got another 1,500 words out in no time at all.

No more quiet time for me. Apparently there is nothing like the sound of your own voice to drown out your thoughts. Now I’ll talk to myself in the car, when I’m doing the dishes, in the shower, pretty much any time I’m alone. The only thing left that can't seem to drown out is the happy little chirping I keep hearing while I work out solution after solution aloud: “I found my process, yippee! I found my process, yippee! I found my process, yippee!”

Now that you've seen a few of my oddest attempts at methods, what are the strangest you've tried?

Tomorrow is Always a Day Away

Today’s blog is about not blogging. And about not writing, not exercising, not dieting, and in general just not doing. The past few months I’ve been juggling so many hats and projects and lately I feel like I’m always on the run, always working on something, or something is always hanging over my head as something else that has to be done in short order. So those precious times when I find myself with an evening or even just a few hours during which I don’t absolutely have to be doing something, I’ve been pushing off the things that, while they have value to me, aren’t on that list of absolute requirements and doing a blissful amount of nothing instead.

For instance...

I really need to start exercising...

I really need to finish writing that chapter of ‘Tilt’...

I really need to finish woodburning the dragonfly clock...

I really need to update my blog...

I really need to organize the stuff from the move...

I really need to de-cat-hair the Catio

I really need to finish the book trailer for ‘Alice Will’...

I really need to cook a healthy casserole for lunches this week...

But I can do all of that tomorrow and enjoy tonight, right?

The "Catio." My writing studio, Fortress of
Solitude, and Bat Cave. Oh, and it has cats.

Wrong. I’ve been consciously lying to myself for weeks now by deciding to do something on the morrow -  and YES, it is a lie because I know I’ll probably go through the same song and dance again the next day. And the next day. Tomorrow is the day that never comes and I’m going to have to start making myself do what I know I should be doing today, not tomorrow.

Now that was Part I of confession time today. I’m a slacker hobbyist and I know it. But Part II is that I know I’m not going to change overnight. Or maybe not even overyear. Sure, there are lots of passive incentives for getting these things done (along the lines of “I’ll feel better for having done this”), but there are plenty of those for sitting my lazy ass on the couch and reading a great  book, too. I think my solution might lie in negative incentives for NOT doing them.

I’ll start small... All of those things listed above are things that I could do every night and any night when the chores and whatnot are complete. Maybe I need to pick one totally at random per night and spend at least an hour doing it. The negative incentive? I'll do exactly what Mom did when I was a kid who wouldn't do my homework: I don’t get to read/eat ice cream/watch Battle Star Galactica until I’ve spent that hour in productive mode. I may even have to rope Steven in to be my conscience and keep me honest in this endeavor, although there is the danger that he might enjoy the role of task master a bit too much. Granted, this may end with me spending some nights staring at a blank wall because I can’t motivate myself, but I think maybe I’m on the right track.

And you know what the best part is? I’m going to start tonight. Because tomorrow will always be a day away.