500 Words

Posted on January 8, 2024 by C. Patrick

Here’s a factoid about me: when I’m on a roll, I can produce about 1000 words an hour. I once wrote a whole novel (75000 words-ish) in ten days. It was Thanksgiving holiday and I took a couple of days off, but essentially I was knocking out 10,000 words a day during that time. And I wound up with a novel I liked, too–so it was quantity AND quality. Not saying it couldn’t use some editing, but it was in pretty good shape, say self so I do.

That novel was a one-off, but producing 1-3k words per day isn’t outside the realm of my writing capability. That said, I rarely do it. Why? Possibly because I’m lazy. But more likely because I’m easily distracted (SEE: the name of this blog). This became especially true during the years of High Pandemic (I’ll write about this means of designating eras of COVID in another essay, maybe). During that time, when I wasn’t working on the podcast (The Gothic Podcast, wherever you catch your pods), I was scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Should I have been writing, writing, writing? Almost certainly. But a lot of us didn’t do what we ‘should’ have been doing during those times. And that’s okay.

And it’s certainly okay not to type 1-3k words per day.

But if you count yourself a writer, should you have SOME quota of words-per-day? Plenty of advice out there would tell you to do so. It’s in nearly every writerly-advice book there is. When I’m writing short stories, though, I don’t have a quota. Short stories burn hot and bright and fast in my brain, and I have to get them out on those waiting blank surfaces of the page as quickly as I can. When I’m writing short stories, I’d prefer not to tidy up the house, cook breakfast (or lunch or supper), take out the trash, answer the phone, check my e-mail … all I want to do is write and get it down. Get the story … out there. Five thousand words in a day? Great! Done! Time to edit.

In the past few years, I’ve had a few of my many finished short stories published (check out the link, er, somewhere), but I haven’t written a new novel in … years (we’re not talking about editing the ones I’ve already written, or the trudging, terrible work of getting them out to potential agents and editors — that’s a task that requires a much different set of skills than writing the story in the first place).

So, lately, I’ve been wanting to create something new in the long form of the novel. But I had to figure out how to, y’know, do that. My brain has become wired to scrolling, to binge-watching TV, to doing something outside of the house (hiking, kayaking, whatever). Anything except for writing. Sometimes a short story will rear up from the briars and demand to be stalked, but novels? Do I have enough attention span in me to do that again?

Of course I do. I just have to set the right expectations.

Alright, so what are my expectations? Back when I was teaching onboard US Navy ships and out to sea for weeks on end without pulling into ports, it was easy to set a goal of a thousand words per day and meet that goal, even with teaching and grading and ice cream socials. Far less housework to do out there, and far fewer things to be all shiny and distracting. But a thousand words, although surely possible, might be beyond the bounds of my attention span right now.

So I’m shooting for five hundred.

Yup, just five hundred words per day. If I do that every day, then I have a novel in two hundred days (or possibly less–depends on the story). Two hundred days is a lot more than ten, but it’s also less than a year. Or three. Seems reasonable to me. More importantly, seems reasonable to my brain.

This goalpost number comes with some issues, though. The biggest problem is that once the story starts flowing, it’s tough to cut off at that five hundred word mark. I want to keep writing. Why shouldn’t I keep writing? Waaaa!

But for the quota system to work for me, I have to do it this way. I can’t say, Oh, I did a thousand words yesterday, so I can skip today (I mean, I CAN, and probably WILL, but I shouldn’t), because there will come a day when I might not want to come back to it. But if I keep slogging away at five hundred? Then I have a chance. Maybe. Hopefully.

It’s also important to stop at my marker because, well, it means I’m usually having to stop in the middle of a thought. And if I do that, then I’ll be more likely to want to pick up the writing again the next day. Or at least that’s the hope.

We’ll see how it goes. I’ll let you know.

But should you, if you’re a writerly sort, set a daily quota for yourself? Maybe. Try it out and see if it works. If you do, though, make sure it’s an achievable goal. Heck, do like me and make it something that is waaaay less than achievable for you. Is that 100-words-per-day? Fifty? Two? Whatever it is, set it, stick to it, and then, after you’ve been at it for a while (a month? two?), re-evaluate. Maybe then you can up the number. Or maybe you need to drop it lower.

But keep at it and, eventually, one word after another … you’ll have a novel.

***

(By the way? The above is a little under 1000 words. Does it count toward my 500? Nope. Not part of the novel)

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Beg, Borrow, or Steal

Posted on December 8, 2022 by C. Patrick

A Musing on the Art of Grand-Theft Creativity, Writing, and Pro-GMing

“Good writers borrow; great writers steal.” So goes the quote by Oscar Wilde. Or, wait, was it T.S. Eliot? Or, erm, Aaron Sorkin? It’s likely Wilde never said it. Quotes like to hang out with Wilde, or at least say they did when they’re having drinks with you in the hotel bar. T.S. Eliot said something slightly different, something along the lines of, “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.” And Sorkin? Well, Sorkin’s quote was the same, just with different words and about a different industry.

Those of us who are creatives in whatever field–be it art, writing, film, poetry, or (my sidebar project of the last couple of years) pro-Game Mastering–must eventually wrestle with the question of where-do-our-ideas-come-from?. Is there such a thing as originality? Is there such a thing as ‘creation’ rather than ‘borrowing’ or ‘stealing’. Can we have our own ‘style’, or will that always be an echo of someone else’s methods? What does the quote above, whoever or wherever the concept originated (let’s say Shakespeare, because, well, Shakespeare, so why not?) mean to us as we sit down at our easels, our keyboards, our gaming tables and … begin?

I’ve read a lot about writing. So much writing about writing. And one of the observations that the ‘greats’ have is that, when you’re starting out writing, you’re going to write much like your favorite authors write. It’s natural to do so, in the same way that if you spend enough time in another country, or in another part of your own country, you will eventually start to sound like the people there. Your accent and colloquialisms will shift. Even your mannerisms are likely to change. We humans are a species of mimics. Not to mention that, hey, most of the time it’s safer to blend in to your surroundings. Helps keep you from being eaten by the mountain lions.

It’s only after a period of time (variable depending upon who you are) that you as a creative begin to find your own ‘voice’, as it’s called: that combination of style, tone, themes, and implementation that makes a “C. Patrick”, for instance, a “C. Patrick” and not a “Chuck Tingle”.

But even then, of course, those prior influences haven’t gone away. They haven’t somehow magically vanished into the aether and now you are an all-original, all-inspired-by-the-muses, one-of-a-kind you. No, even the greats (Neil Gaiman, let’s say) are what they are because the house of their creativity is built upon a foundation of prior influence.

But is that the same as ‘stealing’?

In a discussion this morning between various GMs in our pro-GM online hangout, an incident came up of GMs joining other GM’s games (especially the games of the Big Guns: those GMs who have packed their games and are making bank doing this gig) in order to see what their secrets are and then steal those secrets for their own games.

Or borrow those secrets.

Or imitate them.

The consensus seemed to be that this activity was bad and should be censured. Akin, in fact, to corporate espionage. I dunno. Maybe. Heck, maybe I was the one who likened it to corporate espionage. or maybe it was Oscar Wilde–don’t remember at this point. And, sure, if you’re being all secretive about it, that’s not up to ethical snuff. “Ahhh,” you say, “I’m a brand-new GM here in this Wild West world of pro-GMing–” at which point you twirl your mustache…or your earlobe, if you you don’t have a mustache– “and I shall sign up for a few games with X, the GM, who is TOP RANKED, and I shall observe from my corner while I twirl my mustache (or earlobe), and I shall see how they do it and they I shall make that exact same product and I, too, shall be a TOP RANKED GM!” and then you cackle, “Muhahahahahaahahahaha!” you say. And then you go out and become The Asylum and make “Sherlock Holmes” (though it DOES have a dinosaur in it, so who can complain, right?)

And being all secretive like that is kinda sucky. You really shouldn’t do that. Be up front about it. Most GMs will happily let you sit in on a game or two of theirs and see how it looks. Most writers will happily let you read their books (I mean, duh) and check out their styles. Many will even share their methods and their personal tricks and their habits: Stephen King wrote his best stuff while high on cocaine (can’t recommend this method: don’t do drugs, kids); Neil Gaiman hand-writes his manuscripts; Toni Morrison did, too, on legal pads; Shakespeare wrote in a bar, probably.

There are whole books dedicated to How I Made This Thing. Whole YouTube channels. Whole Discords. Whole worlds of information out there. No need to steal or even beg for the knowledge.

So why aren’t we all Great Literary Figures, Renowned Artists, Top-Rated GMs? For that matter, why aren’t all of the Great Works the same? (Hollywood blockbusters in any given season notwithstanding)

Because, well, we find our own voice. We find our own way to incorporate the things that influence us into our work and then we set off running. You see, T.S. Eliot’s quote doesn’t stop with “…mature poets steal.” He went on to say, “…bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn.”

I can try to do something the exact same way as someone else, but this will not serve me. It won’t fit me, even if I love the way THEY do it. I will never ever ever ever write like Neil Gaiman does. But do I want to? If I’m being honest with myself: no. For one thing, even just thinking about hand writing an entire novel makes my hand cramp up. No, I don’t want to be Neil Gaiman. I want to be C. Patrick. I want my style and my voice and my method to shine for me and thus allow me to give my audience–in whatever form they take–something wonderful that they will cherish…that they, if they are artists too, will borrow or even steal, until they, too, can emerge as something bigger than what has influenced them.

When I go and play at another GM’s table, I often think, “Hmmm…well, here’s how _I_ would have done that differently.” Or I read an author’s book and think the same about how I would have handled the concept. Of course. And that is good. Once that begins, you are forging your own path, your own voice. But, also, I see things they do and go, “Ooooo…that’s awesome; that totally fits with my style.” And then I “weld that theft” into something that IS mine. Something that was born out of that influence, but which you might never be able to trace back without a genetic test.

And when another GM comes to my table (as happened recently), or another writer reads something I’ve written and says, “Hey, wow, that was awesome, I picked up some great ideas from this that I’m going to incorporate into my own work,” I say…”Yesssssssssssssssss.”

And, man, I look forward to seeing what they come up with so I can enjoy that creation…

…and maybe steal something from it.

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My Friend …

Posted on April 15, 2021 by C. Patrick

Toward the end of “Tombstone” (the awesomely trope-y and irresistibly quotable 1993 movie starring Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp and Val Kilmer as Doc Holiday), Wyatt Earp visits Doc on his deathbed and tells him that he wrote a book about him. The book was called “My Friend, Doc Holiday.” Doc didn’t seem all that interested, but the intent was clear: Wyatt loved his friend and wanted to commemorate his life.

I want to commemorate my friend’s life. I’m a writer; I should be able to do that. But every time I give it a start, I find myself writing down the usuals: great guy, passionate hiker, was good to children and pets; loved his friends and family. That’s an obituary, not a commemoration.

And yet in something this side of book-length, I’m not sure how to do that. And when I think, Fine, I’ll just do book length–writer, duh!–I once again have to accept that my memory is a sieve. I depend on my friends and my photography to be my memory for me. And so what will happen is that I will drive by a trailhead and suddenly think of that time Chris and I went hiking in the Mark Twain National forest in southern Missouri, completely unprepared for the humid, 99-degree day (ie: no food, no water, no compass, no nothing but our clothes and a desire to do a bit of a walkabout). We managed to wander off the trail and get a bit lost. Tired, hot, losing our tempers and our hope, we bushwhacked for a while and then came across the most wondrous find: a spring trickling over a small, stony cliff, filtered by moss. We put our hands under the dripping water and drank, our parched bodies not caring about bacteria or microbes or deer pee. It was the best water I have ever tasted.

I think of that and cry.

Or I pull out a gaming book to prepare for a session and remember how Chris and I first met, way back in 1990 (good lord, that long ago?) when he was looking for a game and we were looking for a player and spotted just the right index card in the rolodex at our Friendly Neighborhood Gaming Store: it was this guy wanting a group that was, “mature adults without a lot of drama.”

I think of that and cry.

Or I wander by my DVD collection (yeah, I still have one of those; leave me alone) and spot “Tombstone” there on the shelf and remember those multitude of times he and my then-wife and I watched and rewatched it, until you could hardly hear the actors’ lines because we were drawling out the quotes.

And I cry.

I want to tell you about the hikes we went on. So many hikes and camping trips. I want to tell you about the life he wanted to live: one that involved a VW Van and bumming around Mexico. I want to tell you about the experiences he had on his several treks on the Appalachian Trail, even though I wasn’t able to join him on those. I want to tell you about our always-shunted-into-the-future plans of hiking the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain. I want to tell you about the various times we were roommates and the adventures we had.

That time Chris and I went kayaking and were warned about the terrible, terrible ponies and their bite-y ways. No, really. That happened.

But I’m afraid I’d tell it wrong. Because I also want to call him up while I’m writing that book and say, “Hey, do you remember that time we came across that weird water mill north of Springfield? Why were we up in that area? Was that the time we also found that little fenced-off and abandoned cemetery, went in, and came out covered in deer ticks?” And he’d say, “No, we were looking for that bridge where you were supposed to be able to park on it, put your car in neutral, and then it would move forward on its own and you were supposed to be able to find dusty handprints on the trunk. And that water mill wasn’t north of town.”

or…

“Man, do you remember that first house we were roomies in?” We called it the Incredible Sinking House because every time it rained it seemed the house sank another 1/8th of an inch below the surrounding terrain. We’d go into the kitchen in the mornings and there would be slug trails across the floor. My cat would catch rabbits and snakes and bring them–still alive!–into the house. “Of course,” he’d say. “Remember that oil drum out back we were afraid to open because we assumed there was a body in there?”

I do now.

When I was living in Mexico with my then-wife, Lora, Chris came down and visited. I showed him the usual destinations: the Zona Silencio (a radio dead-zone, ’cause, y’know, aliens); the ghost town of Mapami and its old mine accessed via a 900-foot long suspension bridge; downtown Torreón with its colorful shops and tasty foods, watched over by the world’s third-largest Christ statue, the Cristo de las Noas. But the most memorable bit of that trip was the trek we took heading back up to the States, and not just the armed checkpoints where guys in military fatigues would ask us, “You have any drugs in there?” pointing at the car, and when I said no, responded, “You want some?” but also when we got to the border, having loaded the trunk with alcohol requested by various friends back home, only to learn that we were only supposed to have, like, a liter and a half of liquor OR a case of beer, and NOT an entire trunkful of booze. Yet the pre-9-11 border guard was nice to us and let us pay the tariffs on all of it, rather than confiscating any. And talking about this, Chris would say, “Nah, man, that was after you and Lora broke up. We were just down there for a visit. Which means it wasn’t a pre-9-11 border guard, either.”

Oh, right!

Thirty years of memories. I’d screw the book up, is what I’m saying.

Thirty years of being friends. We weren’t always living in the same city, but we’d call up and chat quite often. Bemoan the state of the world. BS about whatever. Recently, after Chris’ esophageal cancer went into remission against all the odds, we decided to do a podcast together. We couldn’t quite get a handle on what we wanted it to be like, so I snagged the domain name SomeKindofPodcast.com and we started recording us chatting. Just talking, but recording it rather than letting it fade into the aether of memory. We only got enough material for about three episodes. I’ll post a link here when those are ready for you to listen to. When I can finish editing them without, y’know, crying.

I wish we’d had the time for a hundred more.

F*&@k cancer.

I miss my friend.

Anytime, anywhere, man. Ah’m your huckleberry.

. . .

You may or may not have known him, but if the spirit moves you, the family has asked for donations to go toward Esophageal Cancer Awareness in the name of Chris Cook. I would also add that Chris would have been pleased if we also threw some money toward our local Trail Associations. Thank you in advance, everyone. And, hey, savor every memory and moment you have.

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