Category Archives: Personal

your day to day and your inside you

Priorities and Time Thievery

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I’m not a write everyday kind of guy. I wish I was, and I have been at times (working on a novel seems to bring that out of me). I read comments from other writers who put in at least a few hours every day (if not more), working on their craft. I kid myself at times by thinking “they’re professional writers, that’s their job,” and while there’s a kernel of truth there, I know they all suffer from the same hecticness and interruptions as I.

The ideal is just that—writing for several hours a day, uninterrupted, churning out so many thousands of words at each sitting. During these times there would be no email, or phone calls, and no other projects demanding their share of time.

The reality for most of us is that life can’t be put on hold. There’s family, and work, other commitments, and other distractions. For me specifically, I work for myself—which means I need to be responsive to clients if I wish to continue working for myself. My work is full of ups and downs (busyness wise), and when I’m busy it’s best that I remain busy.

It is during these times when you need to realize what your priorities are. Is writing—or some other creative endeavor—critical to you? Is it worth sacrificing at least a little time to keep it going? I assume if you’re reading this then it is—I know it is for me.

There’s the big solutions—organize your time, plan, prioritize, keep lists, block out your calendar, etc. Or, you can take smaller steps—take snippets of time from other activities: write while watching TV (if this is family time, join in on the TV watching but wear headphones so you can focus on your work), while eating breakfast or lunch, during your commute (please not while driving!), in bed before falling asleep or when you just get up. Steal a half an hour here, an hour there, whatever you can get away with.

I’ve written in bed fairly often (where I started this)—before falling asleep, after having slept for a while, and first thing in the morning. I’ve written the first moment out of a shower, while on the can (go ahead and judge), while waiting in line at Chipotles, in front of the TV, on the road, and in the plane. One of my favorite places is lunch (I’m currently writing at a small bakery in Sedona)—there’s often a nice but non-distracting hum of activity.

You should also keep tools around to enable these stealing of moments—a pen and pad of paper if you’re a hand-writer, or electronic tools for the rest of us. Find a good app for your phone, or carry a tablet with you everywhere you go. Keep your data in the cloud (I personally use Dropbox and an app on the iPad that syncs all of my writing to it) so you can work on your current projects or start new ones where ever you are.

And if you do time steal, don’t get hung up on word counts—in fact, I don’t think it’s worth worrying about those normally unless under specific deadlines (don’t create more things to discourage your writing). Be happy that you perfected a sentence, eeked out a paragraph or two, or jotted down some new ideas. Any and all progress is good.

If your writing is a priority, you will find ways to make it happen.

My own results are mixed, of course—I’ve gone a week or more without writing a single word. More often than not, though, I do add to something at least several times a week. During this past week, while being on vacation, I’ve finished a first draft of a short story, made additional notes on some other projects, and pushed this blog post out (a few days late, sure, but who’s counting). This all came during breakfast, lunch, in the plane, and hanging out at my father-in-law’s house. Perhaps I sacrificed a bit of conversation time, but that’s how my priorities roll.

Writing Horror (When You Didn’t Think You Could)

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Ivan Ewert’s debut horror novel, FAMISHED: THE FARM, was released October 12, 2012 through Apocalypse Ink Productions. It has been described as “a lovely, gruesome book” and is available through Amazon.com. His work has previously appeared in the award-winning anthology Grants Pass, as well as in Human Tales and Space Tramps: Full-Throttle Space Tales. His dark supernatural novella, Idolwood, was serialized in the e-zine The Edge of Propinquity throughout the year of 2011. Ivan can be reached at www.ivanewert.com and on Twitter @IvanEwert.

 

The last horror movie I saw was the original Jaws, in 2006. I never watched it before then. I was too frightened.

Today I’m a published horror author.

I admit it doesn’t really add up.

Horror’s not something I thought was in me, and yet FAMISHED: THE FARM apparently gave a few readers nightmares. It’s  been called “super gruesome” and “disturbing,” and I suppose there are a few scenes that fit that bill. Still, I really only felt the disturbing feelings it awoke during a single scene – and that had more to do with the emotional betrayal of the characters than the horrific acts being described.

So how did I write up-front horror when I didn’t think it was part of me?

  1. Look to the ordinary and make it terrible. I’ve got a bad habit, a mild case of dermatophagia. In English? I bite at my nails and skin. I don’t even think about it most times, but when I saw the divots in the pads of my thumbs, the white moistness of the flesh? That played a big part in FAMISHED’s conception. I had friends whose parents were farmers, and saw the way beasts of burden had to be handled, saw the easy decrepitude barns can sink into. There’s terror in your household cleaning supplies, in the rotting food in the back of your fridge, in the way a glass shatters and splinters against the floor. Use it.
  2. 2.       Have sympathy for your little angels. I dislike most horror films because I empathize with the victims. Even during trailers, I find myself thinking of their families, their children, wondering if mom or dad or their baby is ever coming home again. I wonder how I would react if someone I loved went missing, and imagine the worst … and then I write it down.
  3. 3.       … and sympathy for the devil. If your villain’s just a killer – or worse, a craaaaaazy killer, man – you’re not going to be able to make things horrible enough. Everyone in fiction has to have a reason or an explanation for the things they do, bar none. My villains in the Farm alternately believe they’re saving civilization, or rebelling against laws they find unjust; but they have reasons for doing what they do. That made my scenes in the pigpen, the loft, and the punishment chair much simpler to write.
  4. 4.       Writing. Is. Exorcism. Truth. Writing the scenes was sometimes difficult, and often done in the darkness. Once it was on the computer screen, though, the worst was over. I didn’t dream about the way the knife would feel, or the heat of the blood, or the voice of the Wound. It was done, and after a week, a clinical eye could be turned on the phrases without feeling my stomach lurch.
  5. 5.       Use your fears. Fearless heroes aren’t horror heroes, they’re hardboiled. Antiseptic terror is cranked out by a formula that counts decapitations like Harlequin counts heartbeats. If something makes you frightened, that’s half the battle! Grab that fear, and swing it by its tail. Bash its head against the rocks of your story and let the worst come out. It’s not real. It can’t hurt you.

That last one’s important. I’m not mothering anyone when I say that what we write isn’t real. If you’re prone to nightmares, then do what you’re supposed to do with all your life’s dreams, and use them. Humans with words in their blood have done that since wolves howled at the edge of the firelight, silver teeth and terrible claws, trying to keep us in the darkness.

We’re storytellers. We’re dreamers. We’re writers. It’s our life’s work to take all that’s in us, the good and the bad, and bring all our dreams into the light for others to learn from, shiver at, wonder about.

Cherish your fear, and share it with us all.

I’ll be waiting.

balance

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Last month I had made up my mind to not accept any new projects for a while. I wanted a break. It had been a rough summer and I was burnt out. I had a few obligations I was wrapping up and then I just wanted to step back and read a book. Then, as happens, I got an offer I could not refuse, so I’m actually now busier than ever. It’s a good thing—a great thing, really, but I realize I still need to re-evaluate stuff. It has me thinking a lot about how to do this creative life thing long term, how to take on a good amount of work while keeping my balance.

There is this romanticised image of the dedicated artist that I’ve held up as my ideal: the creative individual sacrificing everything for their art. Times past when I got a huge ASAP project I put everything else in my life on hold while I dove in and swam up stream to the finish. But I think if I’m going to make this be a long term thing in my life, I have to make the time to take the dog for a walk to the park. To help my kid with his homework. To be present for my partner (who takes a good deal of the load at home when I have a heavy project bearing down). I need to make sure I’m getting enough sleep. Plus, I signed up for another marathon, so I need to make sure I am getting the necessary exercise to prepare for that. I have wondered if things like training for a marathon are luxuries (ha ha) I can no longer afford, but I’ve learned how much I need those physical outlets for my mental health, so I’m keeping them on the table.

If it’s not obvious by now, I am a work-a-holic, more comfortable with a task than with socializing. So I need to pay special attention to taking care of my friendships and my loved ones. The other night, we went to dinner and a movie with friends and it was hard for me to turn off the radio station in the back of my head, telling me I shouldn’t be there, that I should be at home working. My online life is reduced to retweeting an occasional thing of interest and liking a few status updates. I miss my online life. It’s a balancing act I’m still figuring out.

Something else I’m working on: letting go of my fear of failure, the horror that I won’t be good enough. Here’s an interview with comic writer Kelly Sue Deconnick that’s worth listening to for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that right in the middle of it (at 33:24 minutes in to be precise), she says this about deadlines: “the month is going to come regardless of if you are ready, and sometimes you will not get it as all-together as you hoped, but you move on and do better next time.” That really gave me pause. It reminded me of something that artist Donato Giancola told us at the Illustrations Masters Class this past spring, something I’m paraphrasing, but it was along the lines of: “Occasionally, I have turned in less than top quality work. I am not proud of that. But it happens. You then keep working so that next time is better.” Those two comments made an impression on me, not as an excuse to do less than stellar work, but as a reminder that sometimes you are on your game, sometimes you are not, and you don’t let that keep you from moving forward.

So that’s what I’m trying to do. Work hard. Keep breathing. Find the right balance. Take care of my loved ones. Be a bit more gentle with myself. Stuff like that. I hope this all makes sense—I am writing it on my lunch break before I dive back into that offer I could not refuse.

So here, if you’re interested, a few people who have said it a bit more eloquently:  Lillian Cohen-Moore discusses how to deal with burn out. Then, Damian Walters-Grintalis talks about writing when you are broken and John Nakamura Remy talk about how he learned to stop worrying and love his goals. Finally, Amy Sundburg discusses priorities and social media.

Okay, that’s all. Time to get back to work.

Writing When You’re Broken

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There would be a post here, but life got in the way.

Seriously, though, life sometimes does get in the way. Vacations, family responsibilities, illnesses, day jobs. But what about the days when you have several hours free and you sit at the computer, staring at the screen, willing the words to come?

What about when you get in the way?

I’m not talking about the distractions of social media. Everyone knows they can shut off their net connection if they have no willpower otherwise, right? I’m also not talking about writer’s block, at least not in the way you think.

What if the illness is a big one? What if the day job is suddenly gone, along with the paycheck and the health insurance? What if your partner or spouse just packed his or her bags and took a permanent vacation away from you?

How do you find the mental will to write when your brain is slowly crumbling from the stress and chaos?

The first choice is the easy one. Don’t write. Step away from the computer completely or limit your use to Twitter and Facebook. Maybe you have that luxury. Maybe writing is just a hobby.

But what if you have a deadline waiting and not writing is not an option? What if the bats in your belfry are not just lingering but swarming in a chaos of ammonia and fluttering wings?

Use your stress.

Yes, gather up those bats and channel them into your writing. Feed your words with anger, with sorrow, with hurt. Do terrible things to characters, give them the life you wish you had at the moment, or give them the life you fear most. Write dialogue that says all the things you wish you could.

Your writing may very well end up with a different, stronger, resonance. You may be able to see things from a different point of view. Strong emotions don’t have to work against you. They can be the incendiary fuel for your phoenix of words instead of immolation.

But maybe you can’t. Maybe what you feel is too big, too much. So escape from your stress. Disappear into your fiction. Use it as the buffer from the chaos. Maybe things outside the word cave are terrible but inside, you are the master. If you wallow too much in your chaos, you’ll end up spinning your wheels on a stationary bike to nowhere.

View your writing as a toy. Ever notice that kids like to play even when they’re sick? Sure, you say, they’re kids. They have that endless energy. Maybe so, but maybe those towers made out of blocks help them not pay so much attention to their illness. Use your words in the same way. Build your own tower. Slay a dragon. Banish a ghost. Break a heart.

Words can cut, they can wound, but they can also help you heal. Even when you’re not aware they’re doing so.