One Step at a Time
Folks, I figured this week’s post should be about something we all need.
Is it optimism? Well, optimism never hurts, but while I believe optimism is helpful in the main, it’s not going to get you to sit down and write or create (not by itself, anyway).
Is it faith in yourself and your ideas? Well, again, this does not hurt and can only help.
But when you have much faith in yourself, and you’re not sure your ideas will ever matter, what do you do then?
What I try to do is to take a step back, see the big picture, and realize that while I can’t control the market (or the court of public opinion, either, truth be told), I can control what I do.
I know that for myself, creating something new is absolutely essential. Whether it’s in music or words (no matter what type of words, either, as sometimes a poem can say more in two short pages than a novel can in hundreds), cooking something different, or just being willing to experiment a bit to learn a new skill (how I learned latch-hooking, years ago, and needlepoint, much less how to make an oboe reed and/or finish off a clarinet or saxophone reed) can help me keep going.
Life, you see, is as much about learning as it is about anything else. That includes learning new things about yourself, your talents, and the uses for same.
So, when I lack optimism, I tell myself that I’ve done creative work before and will do it again.
When I worry that I don’t have enough faith in my ideas, I put that to the side and keep going anyway.
Persist, persist, persist. That’s my motto.
It should be yours, too.
What Motivates You? (Hint: Your Characters Will Show It…)
Folks, I’ve thought long and hard about this topic (the topic being motivation, as the title says), as I think what motivates you as a writer is likely to be what motivates your characters, too.
Now, you might be shaking your head here. Your characters probably range from awful people to good ones; from those who keep fighting to stay afloat, and those who sink like a stone; from those who do, to those who wait. They would seemingly all have different motivations driving them, right?
And all of it — all — comes from you.
Your motivations are important. They infuse everything you write and everything you do. Whether you believe in miracles, believe in hard work, or a combination of the two, much less your not-so-good characters believing in expediency and “going along to get along,” why you do things can’t help but shine through.
This is why people talk about “what is your brand.” I wish we’d come up with a better way to put that, as I don’t like codifying people in the same way as we codify objects. However, as this is the term we’ve got, I’m going to run with it.
My “brand,” so to speak, is this: Out of desperation and tragedy comes hope, safety, and romance. A better life awaits my characters, if they can just get through the morass they’re in right now.
Now, that’s not exactly a great “tag-line,” another concept I’m not entirely keen on. How can you sum up yourself and your writing with one, simple sentence? If you could do that, why would you write at all? You’d have your one sentence, and you’d be done.
Yet I’ve been compelled to write all sorts of things. Books. Stories. Novellas. Blog posts. Opinion pieces. Sports articles. Poems.
What’s the one, common denominator in all of those disparate things? Me.
So, what you bring to the table — or the internet cafe, or the workroom, or whatever — is absolutely crucial. Everything you are, everything you have done, everything you have observed, gets into your writing, much less the entirety of yourself.
That’s just a fact. But what you do with that fact is up to you.
What do you think about motivation? What drives you and/or your characters? Tell me about it in the comments!
A July “State of the Writer” Update
Folks, I know I’ve not been blogging much this summer. It has a great deal to do with two things: the poor air quality (AQ) and my overall health. In addition, I suffered a hard fall last week on the concrete pavement outside Chez Caffrey, and was lucky to escape serious injury. (As in, I didn’t break anything. Just bruised and battered. No concussion, either.)
At any rate, it’s been a while, so I figured I’d let you know what my upcoming plans are, writing-wise.
First, I have a completed story called “All the News That’s Fit…” that I hope to have out within a few months. I’m still trying to figure out what would be good cover art for it. I’ve had some help along that line recently, so we’ll see if I can come up with something…anyway, that’s a completed story in the novella range.
Second, I have a nearly completed young adult story in my late husband Michael’s Atlantean Union SF universe called “In Harm’s Way.” It features a young woman, Ryann Creston, who along with her shuttle of incoming cadets was shanghaied instead to an out-of-the-way space station. How she breaks free and saves them all is the point of the story…and yes, she’s only fourteen.
Third, I’m working on a sequel to “Baseball, Werewolves and Me,” which doesn’t have much of a title right now but is at 15K words. The adventures of Arletta the psychic and Fergus her werewolf husband and the baseball team that now employs them both is a lot of fun to write. I’ll let you know more once I figure out exactly what my ETA for this is.
Fourth is the “mystery project,” which I’m not going to discuss at this time. I will say I have about 10K on that, and I hope it’ll go to 90K. Once it does, I’ll let you know what it’s about, why I’m doing it, etc.
Fifth, I hope to have the short story “In the Line of Duty” out later this year. It is a sequel to “To Survive the Maelstrom” and features some of the same characters.
Sixth, I am working on an Elfyverse short story collection. Currently I have four stories and I’d like to have six. One is set around Valentine’s Day, another is set around Yuletide, and a third is probably going to be set around New Year’s Day and/or the Winter Solstice.
So, that, and whatever editing I can do, is what I’m up to. What’s going on with you folks? (Tell me about it in the comments.)
The Bad Air Blues
Folks, I haven’t written a blog in a bit because, where I live in Wisconsin, we had some of the worst air quality in the nation over the past few weeks.
Bad air — in this case, polluted air from Canadian wildfires — was the culprit. I am asthmatic, so poor air quality is the bane of my existence. I can’t do much when the air quality is terrible except pray that it goes away and go about whatever business I can contract (usually it’s whatever is needed to stay alive and no more).
Now, is this living well? Hell, no, it’s not. It’s merely the best I can do, that’s all.
The Fourth of July was yesterday, which of course is a huge holiday in the United States due to it being Independence Day. Usually, the fireworks would not hurt me; the air quality to start with is usually good enough to handle it. But this year, I’m afraid it wasn’t…not for me, anyway.
See, when the air is bad, there’s almost no way to get away from it. Yes, there are air cleaners. Yes, there are air conditioners to lower the temperature a bit so (as an asthmatic) you’re not fighting on two fronts (the heat and the poor quality of the air). Yes, there are ways to make things better, but they don’t seem to be helping overmuch this summer.
That said, I am continuing to do the best I can even though I feel like I’m in a holding pattern. I’m waiting for better days, or at least days containing better air, so I can resume living the best life I can.
I can recommend one very good book to keep you busy, though…it’s called A SPLENDID EXCHANGE: How Trade Shaped the World by William J. Bernstein. I’ve found the insights into this book, which include why slavery flourished for a time but later declined (thank goodness) and the differences between slavery in the West Indies (where people died due to overwork, high heat, and brutal living conditions) and the United States’ Southern states (where while the life wasn’t a cakewalk, families were encouraged to form among the slaves if only to save the owners money in not needing to buy more; it was this reason why the Southern U.S. slaves mostly lived while the West Indies’ slaves died en masse). I don’t agree with everything Bernstein says, as I don’t agree with anything any historian says. (The impolite among you can say it: Maybe I don’t agree fully with anyone?) But I found that an interesting insight, along with others about the rise of the East India Company in the UK, and before them the Dutch’s industrial trade complex, and before that, the Portugese trading empire…everything built off everything else, and while most things were learned over time and transmitted, some lessons seemingly needed to be learned over and over again.
Bernstein’s book is only $2.99 right now as an e-book, and it’s an invaluable resource for writers IMHO. (Especially if you don’t agree with it, mind you. It spurs you on to finding other answers, or at least it has in my case.)
So, I hope that book will keep you amused, as we all continue to fight the poor air quality in the Midwest that probably is going to hang around as long as the Canadian wildfires do.
Paramount Plus Cancels “Prodigy,” and I have thoughts…
A few days ago, I got up to read that Paramount Plus (aka P-Plus) — the streaming service that had finally garnered all of the various Star Trek shows under one roof, so to speak — had unexpectedly cancelled the animated series Star Trek: Prodigy.
How unexpected was this? Well, they’d nearly finished post-production for the entirety of season two.
In other words, this came out of the clear, blue sky.
Making matters even worse, Prodigy was an entry-level series meant for both kids and adults. It was co-branded with Nickelodeon, even…then, with about three days’ notice, Prodigy was gone off the P-Plus streaming service.
Now, this ticked me off. It ticked me off to the point that I found a way to send a message with my wallet. I bought the digital-only copy of the entirety of season one, which was available through Amazon’s Prime Video service. I also started watching the show, something I’d intended to do for months but just hadn’t gotten around to due to so many different things going on that aced that out, priority-wise…and managed to stream six episodes before P-Plus took the series off the site completely.
I also have to add that this was a show — Prodigy, I mean — my late husband Michael would’ve loved. He loved animated shows anyway, but a new Star Trek animated show? He’d have been all over that one, just as I am.
So, what’s so great about Prodigy? It’s funny in a low-key way, it has a holographic Admiral Janeway (the wonderful Kate Mulgrew), and it’s a roundabout continuation of Star Trek: Voyager in some ways as the USS Protostar — a ship the youngsters that end up constituting the crew find on a mining planet where most of them were prisoners and commandeer — had been Captain Chakotay’s ship before it went missing. Chakotay, of course, was Kathryn Janeway’s first officer for many years on the Voyager before they finally made their way back to the Alpha quadrant and home.
So what happened there to the original crew of the USS Protostar? No one knows, as far as I can tell, though I haven’t finished season one yet. From what I’ve read online, at least some of the mystery was to be solved in season two…providing it gets picked up by someone else.
I hope it does, because I like it. I wish I’d found time to start watching sooner, mind you; still, I’ve done what I can, for the moment, and that’s going to have to stand.
If you, like me, are frustrated by P-Plus’s move, there is a petition here that you might want to sign. You also may want to buy a physical copy of the first ten episodes (half of season one), which is all that’s been released on DVD as of yet, though it’s selling out nearly everywhere. Or, like me, you may want to buy a digital copy of Prodigy from Amazon…though it may be unavailable. (How can a digital copy of anything be unavailable? Mine’s there, ’cause I’ve already bought it. I just checked.)
Anyway, I have been enjoying Prodigy and I intend to talk more about it once I’ve finished watching the first ten episodes. (There are twenty episodes in the digital-only version of Prodigy, mind.) But for now, my thoughts are these:
P-Plus, you blew it. Seriously. If you want all of Star Trek to be under one roof, figuratively, you just screwed that up. No tax break is worth this negative-three trifecta of “angers the fans, angers the Prodigy showrunners, angers the media.” These three things are now going to only keep getting bigger, like a snowball going down a steep hill.
If you want my advice, it’s this: Get Prodigy back on the P-Plus platform, stat. Apologize to the fans and the showrunners. Say you had no idea so many people wanted to watch this show. Say that you are floored by the fan outburst going on — the only outburst more prominent than this one re: any version of Star Trek is the proposal for Star Trek: Legacy, a hopeful spinoff of Star Trek: Picard — and vow to do better in the future.
Anything else is unworthy of the people who support your streaming service. Including me.
Do What Is Right
Folks, whenever I ask myself what I should do next, I hear this: “Do what is right.”
Now, what’s right for me may not be right for you, and vice versa. But what I do know is, if I want to live with myself in any sort of harmony at all, I have to examine whatever I do in the lines of the above.
See, it’s very easy to say, “do what is right.” But doing it? All the time? As best you can? It’s not so easy…but in my case, it’s the only way for me to live with myself.
My view of “do what is right” is quite simple. If it’s ethical; if it’s principled; if it’s honest; if it’s above-board, those are the defining characteristics of that pithy phrase.
The few times I’ve gone against my nature and have tried to compromise my principles (more or less, “go along to get along”), it hasn’t ended well. I have to live an authentic life as well as I’m able, as I’ve discussed many times at my blog already. Doing all of this seems to help me, especially with regards to my creativity. It also helps me to stay grounded.
So, when I see that Millennials and Gen Z are talking about the same things I am, but as if they’re new ideas, I get a bit frustrated.
Why? Well, it seems to me that every generation seems to want to reinvent the wheel. Because of this, knowledge that folks who’ve come before them — either people they meet, or books they read — seems to be lost in the translation.
Hell, what I’m talking about is not new. Marcus Aurelius was the first person known to ever write an autobiography of sorts, called Meditations. He discussed Stoic principles along with various things he saw in his life, and believed the best way to live was in authentic harmony with yourself, as that was the easiest way to coexist with nature and the natural world.
Of course, there are various beliefs about whether Marcus Aurelius wanted this book to be published. He was a Roman Emperor, and as such, everything he did and said and wrote was kept, scrutinized, and analyzed. He knew this, too. But he didn’t let that stop him, insofar as coming up with a way he believed helped him live a good life.
In other words, we’re lucky we have Aurelius’s Meditations, and for more than one reason.
Anyway, think about what the phrase “do what is right” means to you. Is it too simplistic of a philosophy to be useful? Is it perhaps too difficult of a philosophy to wish to aspire to?
Personally, I don’t think it’s difficult at all. Especially if you think about it as the predecessor of the Golden Rule, also known as “do unto others as you wish them to do unto you.”
Our world has many religious philosophies, and many different ways of seeing the world. One thing we all seem to agree upon, though, is that honest, ethical, above-board people are far easier to deal with than dishonest, unethical, unprincipled people.
My hope is that over time, we can find ways to find more common ground rather than less.
I also wish that, as people, we start looking for ways to communicate rather than ways to throw up roadblocks because someone’s a different race, ethnicity, sex, gender, etc.
If you need to see someone who could’ve been a right bastard (excuse my language), but instead chose to behave in as wise a manner as he could — that person being Marcus Aurelius, of course — to understand that life in all its variety should be appreciated rather than besmirched, take a second look at old Marcus’s writing.
After all, at one time, all roads led to Rome.
A Late-ish May Check-in
Folks, I’m alive and doing the best I can.
It’s been a tough year so far around Chez Caffrey. Some years are like this; I am aware. But lately, I’ve had many thoughts of my friend, the late writer Ric Locke. His last blog post was called “This Ain’t Workin'” and sometimes I wonder what was going through his mind as he wrote that.
See, he knew his body wasn’t responding to the medications he and his doctor had tried to improve his health. He was tired of fighting, and who can blame him? He’d been through a lot, and deserved his rest…yet he was writing a sequel to his excellent novel, TEMPORARY DUTY. I’m sure he didn’t want to leave that unfinished. But there’s a time when you know there’s not much left, and it gets harder and harder to push that knowledge away.
That’s my best guess as to what Ric thought, as he wrote his final blog.
Mind, if it’s up to me, this is NOT my final blog. I have many, many things that remain to be done, and many stories to finish up, too. I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon, but as the doctors seemingly have no idea at all what’s going on with me, I just don’t know anymore. What they do know is this: exhaustion.
Yep. That’s all they know.
As the US doesn’t have a policy like most of Europe, where everyone gets a certain amount of paid time off — mind, even if we did, as an independent writer/editor I wouldn’t, but still — the best I can do to fortify myself is to read books that make me laugh while doing whatever I am able to do of a work-related and family-related nature. Observe nature in its fullness, which includes (as I live in Racine, WI) great views of Lake Michigan. Talk to people and be kind — because rudeness just doesn’t cut it with me — and hope that the exhaustion will recede, bit by bit.
So, while I’d love a vacation (fruity drinks by the seashore optional), as that doesn’t seem in the cards, I will instead continue to do the best I can.
If you’d like to drop a line below, telling me what’s going on in your life, I’d love to hear it. (I get tired, sometimes, of shouting into the void and hoping somehow that the void shouts back. Yes, a small joke, there…)
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