In my ongoing quest to find the most excellent workflow for posting the same stuff to WordPress and LiveJournal, I am experimenting with a Google Chrome plugin called ScribeFire. It appears to do what I want, especially now that I am running Chrome on all my Macs and PCs.
Let’s say this is a test post.
Years ago I subscribed to Runner’s World magazine, and though my subscription lapsed (you can only read the same “train for a 5k in only twelve weeks” article so many times) I still get their “quote of the day” email every morning. I especially liked today’s quote.
“You only ever grow as a human being if you’re outside your comfort zone.”
Percy Cerutty, running coach
Cerutty was most famous for coaching John Landy, who was himself most famous for being the guy who lost the “Miracle Mile” to Roger Bannister. You know, glance over your left shoulder and the guy passes you on the right. This was back when everybody cared about track, because Bannister had just run the world’s first four-minute mile, and Landy ran the second.
It reminded me of a similar tidbit of wisdom I heard from an unlikely source recently. Madonna’s ex-husband, Guy Ritchie (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels director) was interviewed in Esquire, and related to the interviewer three pieces of “life wisdom” he had accumulated. The first one stuck with me.
“You have to get comfortable being uncomfortable.”
I keep thinking about that, and mentioning it to people. I believe one of the big things that goes wrong with people is they get too scared of being uncomfortable.
It’s hard to exercise, so they don’t do it and they become frail, couch-bound, or have cardiovascular problems.
People hate the idea of saying “no” to even one of their own cravings, so they drink too much, eat too much. I don’t have to tell you what lurks downstream from that lifestyle.
Both quotes are saying the same thing. You have to keep a certain level of comfort with the notion of discomfort, of straining or stretching or reaching. This applies to athletics, to creative work, and really to all areas of life that matter. It’s easy to fall into a groove, to feel numb and comfortable and just coast along, and fail to recognize life is passing you by and nothing very interesting is happening any more.
I say you have to open yourself up to life, consciously engage with it, and be willing to feel uncomfortable sometimes. It’s good to sometimes feel scared, or very hungry, or hot, cold, or exhausted.
Following this morning’s recap of our weekend, mostly centered around the Cannon Beach trip, here’s a sampling of pix.
Every time we go to Seaside or Cannon Beach, our first stop is always Mo’s for this lunch. Crab louie, shrimp-and-bean salad, and clam chowder. It’s unpretentious and certainly not the finest dining to be found in the area, but I’ve been going to Mo’s every time I visit the beach since I was a little squirt, so it satisfies some primal something-or-other.
Incidentally, photographic trickery has been used to disguise the reality that Lena’s crab louie is ENORMOUS, as in more than twice the size of my dainty little salad.
Our hotel had this charming little courtyard and it made a fella want to strip off and take a little dash through the fountain. Problem: fountain wasn’t big enough.
At the beach, everything looks like an insane person did the interior decorating. If you had furniture like this in the city people would avoid ever visiting your house, and if they ever accidentally saw it they’d probably try to avoid meeting you even on neutral ground. But near the ocean, it’s charming and makes you want to pick up a plastic bucket and go make a sand castle.
This isn’t a beautiful piece of photographic art or anything, but it proves we were about a block from the ocean. That’s the glowing white abyss at the end of this street!
No, seriously… this place is really beautiful, like crazy beautiful!
At the beach, everybody takes pictures of sunsets and Haystack Rock so I decided to show you what the rest of it looks like. This is “non-photogenic ordinary Oregon beachscape.”
When I said everybody takes pictures of Haystack Rock, I wasn’t kidding. Seriously.
There are lots of other cool rocks out in the water and nobody bothers taking pictures of them. These are some of the coolest rocks. I think the lighthouse in one of the Harry Potter movies is located on one of these. It’s hard to see the lighthouse in the picture.
I was totally kidding about the Harry Potter lighthouse.
Right at the edge of town there’s this nice, pastoral scene like something in Ireland. It makes me want to hunt a goose for dinner, or possibly take up peat farming.
Sometimes the tide uncovers these little estuaries and a temporary ecosystem happens. These birds are saying “Holy crap, there are anemones here and I’m eating three. There’s plenty for everybody, no shoving!” Then the tide covers it back up and it’s underwater for a while, and these seagulls have to swarm the tourists in the park and beg for little pieces of donut.
We rented these little 3-wheeled bikes called “Funcycles.” They’re like a Big Wheel for grown-ups and it was actually tremendous fun to haul ass down the beach on these things. Though most of the people we saw renting these things just sat still and took pictures of each other after they rode slowly for ninety seconds and got all out of breath. We zoomed seven miles down the beach to where it dead-ended, and back again.
If you go far enough, you start to see the landscape change. Way down south of Arch Cape (which is south of Cannon Beach) the cliff tops are no longer developed with $3 million houses. This is how I remember the beach cliffs looking when I was a kid.
… and …
When the Cannon Beach trip was over we drove south, through Manzanita and Rockaway Beach, and in places Hwy 101 rose way up high and revealed cool vistas.
Then we stopped in Tillamook and went on a tour of the Tillamook Cheese Factory, from which I live-posted some pix to my Facebook.
Those posts included references to Burgess Meredith (“Don’t forget the cheese” commercials) as well as the timeless quip, “don’t cut yourself on that cheese — it’s sharp!”
Aaaaaand… vacation over!
Just emerged from a busy stretch, including a couple days getting ready to go out of town, three days in Cannon Beach, Oregon with my wife, and a transitional day after we returned.
I remember when I was a college kid, going out of town for a weekend involved 4 minutes of packing and about ten seconds of unpacking. Now I have things in my life arranged more carefully, and I pack more stuff. Certain books, the laptop and its charger, maybe manuscript printouts, even multiple pairs of shoes. When I was twenty, I traveled in the shoes I was wearing and that was all. Now I have shoes for running on the beach, shoes for hiking, shoes for walking around town and going out to eat.
Anyway, the trip is over and we had a great time in Cannon Beach, like always. It remains my favorite place that I can drive to in under two hours. I’ll probably assemble photos here soon.
I always think I’m going to have more time for reading and relaxing, but of course we end up being on the go a lot. We always do a lot more running, biking and walking than sitting still with a book.
Also lots of eating and drinking, which is one of the great things about the beach. Good old standby Mo’s for a crab louie and bean & shrimp salad, and clam chowder. Fultano’s for simple grub, pizza and spaghetti & meatballs. Great Mexican food at this brand new place, El Mariachi Loco. The Lumberyard for alfredo pasta with shrimp, and a steak and great big steins of frosty draft beer. The Fireside for veggie breakfast casserole, a half-older of halibut fish and chips, and this amazing gourmet mac-and-cheese with jalapenos. Please note: above recap involves food for two people. Also lots of espresso!
On the way home we went down 101 through Manzanita (and decided that’s our next beach destination — kind of a cool, more casual version of Cannon Beach) and Rockaway to Tillamook, where we toured the Tillamook Cheese Factory (which Lena said should be called the Tillamook Ice Cream Stand, since that’s where most of the zillion tourists were clustered). That’s a place worthy of a photoblog all its own.
Back home again we stopped for a family dinner to celebrate Lena’s birthday (she shares a DOB with one of my favorite insane people, H.P. Lovecraft), and yesterday I spent all day writing. I finished revisions on ‘The Long Tightrope’ (my Writers Weekend critique story), did some more work on ‘Out in the Water’ (that’s a working title, aka ‘that lake story’) and made a bunch of notes for this increasingly strange Hollow-Earth-Insane-Explorers-Find-Buddhist-Transcendence dark fantasy I’ll be drafting soon.
Saturday morning, Lena and I drove to Mt. Hood. It was a super-beautiful day, but Portland’s weather forecast had a three-digit temperature so we thought a hike on the mountain would be more fun than a hike in town. When we got to Government Camp, though, it was already getting hot.
We parked near Trillium Lake and decided to hike some of the snowshoe and XC-skiing trails we’ve visited in recent winters. What we found is that many of these ski trails actually have roads underneath the snow! Because of this, more than half our hike was on dusty gravel and dirt roads. Furthermore, zillions of cars were zooming up and down these narrow roads all day.
When we were able to get away from the roads, and enjoy quiet trails, the hike was beautiful. The top of Mt. Hood was visible through much of the hike reminding us that we were less than halfway up (4,000 feet elevation versus 11,000 total).
At the far end of our hike, we came out in the Ski Bowl rec area. In the summer is converted into a family carnival, which you can see part of in this picture. There were lots of kids go-karting and people bungee jumping and all kinds of summer mountain merriment.
We crossed the highway into Government Camp, which is a little town, not really a camp. It also has nothing to do with any government any more. We had lunch at the Ratskeller, which was the first time I’ve ever eaten in a restaurant named after a rat!
When we were almost done… feet starting to ache, dehydration setting in despite the extra water we carried with us, we found the Trillium Lake public access area, which is normally deserted. Hundreds of people stretching all around this side of the lake, and cars overflowing the tiny parking lot. No wonder so many cars spit up dust at us all day!
Though we pride ourselves on our bad-ass fitness, after five hours hiking we were ready to be done. I had worked up a powerful thirst, and we stopped so I could pick up a nice, frosty beer. Mmmmm, Widmer Hefeweizen mini-keg!
When I first started making electronic music, but before I actually started releasing CDs, one of my favorite things was to imagine what my CD covers would look like. Now that I’m writing fiction, I also find myself daydreaming about what kind of design or artwork I’d like on my “someday” book covers.
I’ve always loved the art of science fiction and fantasy, but I think we’re in a period where some especially beautiful, sophisticated book design is being done. I’ve mentioned the Iain M. Banks “Culture” series here on this blog before, and the covers of those are really beautiful in both the US and UK versions, which are slightly different.
A publisher I’ve just discovered in the last couple of years (and rapidly purchased dozens of their books), a “small press” In San Francisco called Night Shade Books, has done some of the most beautiful book design I’ve seen recently. Their new, upcoming “best short fiction” collection by Kim Stanley Robinson has such a great cover, it makes me want this even though I’m only familiar with the author by reputation.
Speaking of Night Shade, they’re on a roll lately, with great books by Paolo Bacigalupi’s Wind-Up Girl (how great has it got to be for a small press to win a Nebula for one of their novels?), Laird Barron’s two short story collections, a whole bunch of fantastic short story anthologies (both themed and unthemed) by Jonathan Strahan, and probably a bunch of other stuff I’m forgetting.
Back to the question of book covers, though… I love the golden age science fiction imagery with weird aliens, phallic space ships, swoopy princesses in skin-tight costumes, and kick-ass heroes with streamlined metal helmets and bitchin’ rayguns. I enjoy looking at that stuff and it gives me an adolescent tingle when I see it, but I think it’s a good thing for the science fiction field that book cover artwork has become more mature, often more abstract. I don’t own this book by Banks (and I think this is the UK cover and I probably would have to buy a different version anyway) but wow!
Of course the trend is really toward character-focused book covers, where you see a good-looking, slightly dangerous hero or heroine in some kind of peril. It’s just an updated version of the pulp or golden age thing, and while I understand it, and don’t doubt that it gets people to buy books, I love the more austere and sort of suggestive, atmospheric covers. I won’t post any examples of the character-oriented artwork, because you just need to go down to your local mass-market bookstore and look at the science fiction and fantasy sections (particularly fantasy) and you’ll see any number of leather-clad heroines with purple hair, carrying a Stormbringer-ripoff sword, and displaying their particularly meaningful tattoo design along with most of the rest of their skin.
I really have to get that novel going so I can justify all this time spent thinking about book covers!
Those of you casually perusing this blog might say “This fella here looks like one of them wannabe writers, who talks a lot about how he wishes he could write some day, but doesn’t actually commit any words to paper.”
I’ve known people like that, more in love with the idea of writing than with the act itself, but I’m not one of them. I don’t write every single day, but I’m pretty productive. No, the reason I haven’t said much about my own fiction yet is a bit of self-consciousness about talking my own ideas and process. Having asked myself “What’s up with that, anyway?” I’ve come to the conclusion it’s mainly due to being unpublished at this point, so I feel more qualified spouting off about science fiction books and writers, since every reader feels qualified to be a critic. I figure, though, if I have enough nerve to send my work to professional editors to consider for their periodicals (a threshold I’ve crossed), I can certainly put myself far enough out on the limb to talk about some of my own creative philosophies and mechanisms.
Rather than starting with something I feel confident about, though, I’ll begin with a question to which I don’t really know the answer. One thing I feel unsure of, and I go back and forth on this question, is this: How many stories should I be working on at any given time?
Over the past dozen years I’ve recorded a lot of ambient electronic music. That’s not what this blog is about, but it’ll come up here sometimes because it’s an important part of my life. I mention it because in all those years, having released a handful of solo albums and another handful of collaborative ones, I’ve almost never tried to work on more than one thing at once. Finish the Griffin solo album, start the Viridian Sun duo album, start the second Griffin album, set it aside entirely and make the second Viridian Sun album, and so on. The process was to start a project and either finish it or set it aside completely before starting another. I never thought about this way of working, but it made sense to me and it seemed to work.
With my writing, I’ve always worked on more than one thing at once, sometimes juggling a really large number of projects and ideas. Last month I counted twelve short stories in progress and another thirty plotted, outlined or otherwise planned (but not yet started). When I have an idea for a story I slowly add little things to the mix during the planning stage, starting from a scribbled sentence or two that could barely be called an idea, into the seed of a story, fleshing it out into a full-fledged anecdote or scene, finally combining elements of plot and character, conflict and drama, until I have something ready to be written into a story. Often I stumble upon elements that fit well only very gradually, and I feel like my best stories have benefitted from being “in progress” for long enough for this to unfold.
Recently I felt overwhelmed by the many long-pending stories hanging over me, and resolved not to start anything new until I could shorten the queue down to just a few. Though I’m not yet entirely sure I need to change what I’m doing, I’m considering this an experiment.
MANY items working at once gives me the benefit of allowing each idea longer to mature, gather a sort of richness or complexity. The drawback is, certain stories get lost in a swirl of too much going on. When I have a dozen stories working, and I’m not able to write every single day, sometimes I’m away from a given story for long enough that it becomes too unfamiliar and I have to reacquaint myself with important details before I can begin working again.
FEWER items working would help me see clearly all the balls I’m trying to keep in the air, and ensure I can give time to each of them every week without spending too long away. The flipside to this, though, is that I can’t take much time away from an idea that seems like it would benefit from being shifted to the back burner for a few weeks, because I won’t have enough other stuff to work on instead.
I’ve been on roll lately, finalizing stories and sending them out, and January’s dozen or so pending stories may be reduced by half before the end of March. This is gratifying because the more stories I have completely finished and off my plate, the more I feel like a “real” science fiction writer and not just this confused guy who’s starting to dabble in a new genre. Also I feel the stories show rapid improvement, which makes me hopeful about getting something published soon, if not with one of the stories already finished and submitted, then with something I’ll finish soon.
In Stephen King’s wonderful book On Writing (and no matter what you think of King’s own work, this really is a useful book on writing that any fiction writer should own no matter what style they’re working in) he suggests an approach not too different from my own, involving sticking a first draft in a drawer for several weeks until it can be seen more objectively, and working on other things in the mean time.
If my focus were on novels this wouldn’t even be a question, as novelists usually just hammer away on their one novel at a time, or at most take a little break to work on a short story before getting back to it. Nobody’s juggling a dozen novels in various stages of completion. I’m curious how other writers focused on short fiction do this. I suppose I’ll just try narrowing it down a bit this spring, and see if that’s better or not. If it doesn’t feel right, I could always just start a few new stories… toss a few more balls up in the air and try to keep them up.
Last week I read an interview with Thomas Ligotti (who, in case you don’t know, if a very interesting, uncompromising and very strange writer of psychological horror fiction. I’d read about Ligotti before, but in the course of reading this interview I realized a very high percentage of the creative people I’ve admired are somewhere between “troubled” and “completely nuts.”
Just look at who else I’ve written about in this short-lived blog… Hemingway (suicidal alcoholic), Fitzgerald (depressive alcoholic), Philip K. Dick (who, let’s just say, has a five paragraph section under the heading “mental health” in his Wikipedia entry), and now Ligotti. For a catalog of Ligotti’s psychological troubles I’ll leave you to read the above-linked article, if you’re interested.
Add to that list some of my other favorite creative inspirations, for example painters –Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Frida Kahlo — and a pattern begins to emerge. One begins to wonder, do individuals of the sensitive nature who might excel at creation just naturally have a hard time in life due to that sensitivity? Or is it that unbalanced, obsessive people have more time or energy to focus upon their creative work, and are thus more likely to be productive and to succeed? Or is there something in the inward searching all creative artists must undertake that is somehow troubling or corrosive to one’s happiness in the long term?
I really don’t know the answer to this. It does seem, though, that a quick rundown of my list of favorite poets, artists, composers and so on, yields a rate of incidence of psychological problems greater than what’s seen in the general population.
GriffinWords 