Author: Shoshana

‘Whatever It Is, It Can’t Be That Bad’: The Wisdom of Reading and Centauri Ambassadors

by Shoshana, posted in On Reading, On Writing

I woke up this morning with the unbelievable drive to read a book, read a book, read a m-****ing book.

(Sorry, I had to quote that song. Consider that the first use of real profanity on this blog. I’ll keep it to a minimum, promise.)

It’s not as though I don’t get the urge to pick up a book any given day. I think one of the driving forces behind my interest in writing is my almost insatiable appetite for books. In fact, the happiest way for me to spend an afternoon is browsing a book store, lost in the various sections in an attempt to discover some tome I’ve never seen before. But today of all days, I woke up with the urge to read, not write.

I’m staring down the barrel of a deadline that is, for all intents and purposes, tomorrow and all I want is to pick up a book and lose myself in a good story. Is it the drive to procrastinate that’s keeping me away from my work? Is it some self-sabotage instinct? Not this time. This time, I believe, it is the voice of the inner muse reminding me of one glorious notion: others have walked the path before you and more will come behind. See what they’ve done in the past and are doing now and be reminded that it can’t be that bad.

The line – it can’t be that bad – has always come with a particular voice in my head since I was in high school. One of my favorite shows, Babylon 5, had the most brilliant character in it in the form of Centauri Ambassador Londo Molari. His accent was some kind of Eastern Europe space hodgepodge and when he spoke, he let vowels drip like wine. In one episode, he consoles a morose Security Chief Garibaldi by telling him a story about how in his intensely stressful life, he was once sitting in a strip-joint and couldn’t concentrate on the dancers due to his inner angst. Suddenly he looks up and there is a beautiful dancer there, looking at him. She leans down, kisses his bald dome-y head, and says, “Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad!” That little moment of stripper-provided wisdom stuck with me for years, especially spoken from such an awesomely tragic character as Londo in such a hilarious scene. Because sometimes you need a reminder from the weirdest or most off-beat places that it really can’t be that bad.

I had prepared an article for the blog about the isolation that can come from being a writer, especially when one is like me and tends to find the best writing times in the dead of the night. I wanted to talk about the difficulty of telling friends ‘it’s cool, go out, I’m going to stay home and work’ when you want to be there yupping it up over some beers, but your manuscript is calling. I was going to jam on messed up circadian rhythms and the secret joy of finding your muse hiding at the bottom of your second cup of coffee at two AM when nobody is around to witness your discovery and triumph. Then I got an eyeful of Chuck Wendig’s latest blog post about caring less as a writer and I sat back to think, really think, about what can be taken from the lessons I’ve learned lately about being a writer.

First and foremost, I’ve learned to shut up and stop complaining about being a writer so much.

Let me be clear about that statement. Being a writer is no easy roll of the bones. It is an often thankless, uphill battle against your inner demons, resource (time/money/patience) management, and the ever-capricious well of ideas. It can cause you no end of strife either internally or with your family/friends. Hell, it can cause strife with total strangers when they read your work and suddenly you’re in the middle of a flame war online about the true meaning of words like ‘misogyny’ or ‘feminism’ or, y’know, where you put an apostrophe in a sentence (because people just like to fight over ANYTHING but ESPECIALLY grammar). And talking to your friend/significant other/whatever about what is going on in your head is healthy to a certain extent – it’s called sharing and helps make us well-adjusted little keyboard-tappers.

But behind all the fighting and the fretting and the problems writers have, there’s an inherent magic that I think we keep forgetting about. The act of creation that writers embark upon is, at the risk of sounding way too hippy-like, a beautiful one at heart because creation is beautiful. And when we sit down to make the choice to be creators, we take upon ourselves the task of bringing something new into this world.

I’ll highlight that important bit there that we often forget about: we take upon ourselves. 

A brilliant editor I know, John Adamus, once told me that the first step in being a writer is making choices. I also amended that in my head to the first act of being writer is making the choice. When you sit down to the laptop, when you pick up a pen, you are choosing to take up the chance to make something new. There’s no writer chain gang, shackling us to our desks, demanding it’s ten thousand words before your opportunity for parole. And then, shortly thereafter, you make the choice whether or not to fret yourself to death over the very same choice. It’s all within our power to control and those inner stressors we put upon ourselves are within our power to control if we would just, to quote Chuck Wendig, care less.

Those outer stressors, like money and time managements and friends who wish we’d come around more and parents who ‘just don’t understand’, may be more outside of our control than our inner workings, but it’s still our choice where we put our time and our resources. We make the hard choices to find time to be a writer if we want to. We take the power of creation upon ourselves. And then, when we need to outgas some of our self-imposed internal worry, we crank about it aloud and make it part of our creative process. Sit down, write, fret, grouse, get back to work. I took a hard look at that cycle and thought to myself: which parts of these actually serve the creation process and which don’t? I can tell you, it’s those two in the middle that don’t vaguely resemble work.

I spoke last night with my best friend Andrea who recently completed training to become a doula. For those who don’t know what that is and think that’s a very funny word, a doula is someone who helps with childbirth and yes, it is a hilariously funny word. (It always reminded me of Aanold in Kindergarden Cop trying to pronounce ‘tumor’ – tuuumah!). She just went through her second birth yesterday and we caught up as she recovered from the strain of the whole thing. I marveled at her ability to go into a room and help a woman bring another life into this world and told her so – the very notion of the whole childbirth process freaks me out so badly I can barely listen to her describe it. Yet she made the choice to take up a calling to help bring new little people into this world, and as she talked about the long hours and the worry and the shouting involved (there’s a lot of shouting in coaching a birth apparently, just like on TV), I marveled at the excitement she had for all of it and the pride with which she spoke about the entire affair.

Suddenly, all of my complaints about my long hours behind a keyboard went away. I was just helping to bring some sentences and ideas into this world and all I had to worry about was getting them in the correct order to convey ideas and (hopefully) some proper grammar. I wasn’t standing in a delivery room, worrying over a new life coming into this world. If she could find the joy in the midst of stress, the accomplishment in the middle of BabyDefcon One, then what was I missing? Why did I let my stress overwhelm my creative joy? Why was it inherently part of my process?

I won’t go into why I stress about writing here. It’s a long, drawn out conversation that, in it’s own mental Olympics way, can cycle into that woe outgassing cycle in it’s own way and that’s not where I’m going with this. Instead, I’ll say that in the light of perspective, the little things that drive us to neuroses about our writing can be put into silence if we make our choices and keep an eye on where we fit in what I call the chain. That’s where the books come in.

For a writer, reading isn’t just the act of doing research on the greats in the field, or a chance to lose yourself in the work of your favorites. It is a chance to realize that once you picked up the pen, you are among a peerage that stems back to the first time someone chiseled something into a rock for fun and said, “Hey, Caveman Joe, you gotta read this!” You’re among those who made the choice to spin words out of dead air into strings of new reality that spark the human mind the moment they touch a reader’s eyes. And you’re burdened with the idea, just like they were, that if you don’t bring your particular vision to the world, who will. That book in your hand should remind a reader that there are others out there who could look at your stress and your inner demons and say, “Hey buddy, I feel you” and mean it. You as a writer are not alone and in the end, whatever it is that’s holding you back internally and setting off the monkey on your back, it can’t be THAT bad. There are real-world concerns to stress over that need to be focused on, sure, but the woe we generate over our creative selves sometimes needs the perspective only a good book can give.

Or, y’know, a kiss on the head by a beautiful, wise stripper. But if those are in short supply, take your revelations where you can get ’em. I’m sure trying to.

Flash Fiction Challenge: “The Barley Hill”

by Shoshana, posted in Flash Fiction, Writings

Returning to our regularly scheduled writer-ness, here is my contribution for this week’s Chuck Wendig flash fiction challenge, called “Must Love Time Travel.” I’m starting to really dig these 1,000 word sprints for their sheer fun. So here’s my attempt for this week, called “The Barley Hill.”

 

The Barley Hill by Shoshana Kessock

Jake and Amanda sat at the top of Barley Hill at the very end of Noosum Street.

“It’s too big,” Jake whined. He didn’t like the way he sounded, like such a scaredy baby. He put down the handle of his red wagon and eyed Amanda from under unruly hair. “You do it.”

“Nuh uh.” Amanda was half a year older than Jake, and somewhere had grown an extra two inches on him since the beginning of the school year. She crossed her arms over her chest in a mighty impression of their teacher, Mrs. Tandy, and sniffed. “Mom always said gentlemen go first.”

“I’m no gentle man!” Jake pointed out. “I’m eight. And that hill is too big!”

He looked down over the edge of Barley Hill. Noosum Street was a one way street that ran from the railroad tracks on the far end of town through the nicer houses of Barley Hill Developments and all the way to the highway.  In the morning it was the road that took all the parents away from Noosum Street and out to the city to work and at five o’clock it brought them all back. Beyond it lay a field of wheat as far as the eye could see.

Every day when the parents headed to the highway, they had to crest Barley Hill. Most of Jake’s hometown was flat as a pancake, but Barley Hill sat in the middle of everything like the biggest anthill all covered in little white houses. It stood out for miles; Jake often stared at it from his seat in his classroom across town. Most kids didn’t bother climbing the hill unless it was the Fourth of July or New Years, when they wanted the best view of the fireworks. But Amanda lived at the top of Barley Hill, the last house before the plunge down the far side, and so Jake walked the hill all the time. Amanda, after all, was his best friend. Even if she was a girl.

They sat under a wild tree across the street from her house. Jake could still feel the sweat down his back from the long walk up. They had Capris Sun pouches and apples and granola bars. Jake had dragged his wagon all the way up the hill to show to Amanda. He had told her about racing it against the Murphy boys over on Harrow Drive and her eyes had lit up. Jake had dragged the wagon all the way up the hill just to see her eyes sparkle like that again. Now he wasn’t so sure it was a good idea.

“I will get killed,” he said matter-of-factly. “My dad’s car has fights with this hill.”

“Your dad’s car wins,” Amanda retorted.

“My dad’s car can stop!” Jake picked up the juice pouch for a drink. “No way.”

Amanda leaned in closer and her blue eyes were sparkling again. “If you go fast enough,” she said, “you can go back in time.”

Jake stopped with the juice pouch halfway to his mouth. His mouth went dry and his eyes burned.

“No way.” He shook his head. “You cannot.”

Amanda smiled a funny little smile. It reminded Jake of cats and the little animals they chased. “Can too.”

She leaned closer and Jake suddenly thought she looked cat-like too, and a little mean, and maybe a little crazy. Jake had a limited understanding at seven of crazy, he knew, but his dad talked a lot about crazy women. His dad complained about them a lot when he came back from nights when Mrs. Lipnicky would babysit. They’d watch Avatar: The Last Airbender or Thundercats and when his dad came home, he’d mutter about crazy women and promise Jake that he’d feel the same way when he got older. Now Jake wondered if he’d need to wait that long.

“Can-not,” Jake retorted. “How can you go back in time?”

Amanda sat back against the tree. “If you go fast enough,” she replied in an oh-so-knowing voice, “you’ll go back in time. It’s like in that movie once, that old one with the car. Go fast enough and you can do it.” She pointed to the wagon. “You don’t need a car, though. You have that.”

Jake knew which movie she meant. “Not everything you see in movies is true, Amanda.”

“Some things are!” She pointed to the wagon. She sounded so sure of herself. “This is. Don’t you want to time travel?”

Jake did. He wanted to time travel very much. He eyed the red wagon and the letters painted on the side that lovingly spelled his name, then looked down the hill again. He thought about how sure Amanda sounded and his dad’s muttering. His dad muttered a lot these days, about crazy women and about something called the mortgage and how the shocks on the car couldn’t take the trip down Barley Hill. He muttered instead of talking to Jake most of the time. The muttering had started after the Fourth of July last year, after the highway accident. Jake knew where the accident had happened. If he went to the bottom of the hill and turned right, he could walk to where they’d found his mom’s car, all crumpled around a telephone pole beside the waves of gold wheat.

Below, the highway shimmered in the afternoon heat. No cars had passed since he’d arrived.

“There’s no such thing as time travel,” he repeated. But when he looked at Amanda, she looked back solemn and serious.

“If there isn’t,” she said, “it’ll still be fun.” And her eyes sparkled.

Jake finished his juice pouch, stood, and took up the handle of his wagon. He wondered how many pieces he might end up in if he crashed, and how if wheat was as soft as it looked. But mostly, he wondered how fast one had to go down Barley Hill to get back to the Fourth of July.

Sharing Dreams In The Dark: Aurora Colorado Shooting Response

by Shoshana, posted in Random Aside, Uncategorized

I started off today thinking I would sit down to work on various writing projects. I had a blog post planned about organizing one’s thoughts and some flash fiction to post. Those might go up later. Instead, I want to discuss something that happened early this morning that the world woke up hearing about. While lots of folks were snug in their beds, fans across the country were going out to midnight showings of The Dark Knight Rises. In Colorado, some of those fans aren’t going home again.

It’s no surprise to me that the event caught such media-wide attention. A massacre at a blockbuster film premiere will catch the world’s attention. What amazed me instead was the responses people have had. Overwhelmingly, I have seen an outpouring of thoughts and prayers for those injured and deceased, as well as to the families of those affected by the events in Aurora, Colorado. But there have also been the negative responses. Here are some of my favorites:

“Well, if we had more gun control in this country…”
“Well if we had less gun control in this country…”
“Well it’s the fault of (insert political/religious fall-guy here).”

But here was the one that got me the most. And you’ll forgive me if I paraphrase.

“Well, why should I care about something that happened across the country? Bad things happen here all the time! You don’t see me sitting around getting all musty-eyed about bad things here, I’d be depressed all the time! Don’t forget, people get shot in (insert local community) and you don’t see people getting so upset when that happens! This is just because it’s a big media event that people care.”

No. And no. And no.

This isn’t about it being big media. Or local crime. This isn’t about modern cynicism or jaded attempts to distance one’s self from tragedy. This is about one thing only: the following sentence, which has followed me all day.

Last night, people walked into a movie theater to watch Batman save Gotham from evil and died in the darkness there.

It’s no secret today that this whole tragedy has caught me in a way I didn’t expect. Perhaps it’s because, growing up, theaters were a place to get away for a little while from the things that were bothering me. Perhaps its because, while those people were across the country dying in a theater, I was on my way home from my own midnight showing where I was lucky enough not to be menaced by a madman with a gun and where instead I had a lovely evening with my friends. Perhaps its because the idea that someone would go into a Batman movie with a gun feels oddly more horrifying and violating to me. But this entire event has me shaken and the answer of ‘why should I care, it’s not in my hometown’ has me worse than boggled. It has me horrified.

I’m a media girl, there’s no question about that. I believe in the power of cinema and the written word and the visual arts to bring light to places that are dark, to spin ideas into words that can spark understanding in the mind and hope in the heart. Special and dear to my heart are comic books and their heroes, a pantheon of characters that stand almost inviolate in their presentation of higher ideals and ethical idealism. There are few constants in this world as universal as the Big S on Superman’s chest and the fact that as long as there’s a Gotham being written in comics, there’s a masked man named Batman out to protect it’s people. Comics spawn larger than life guardians that, sadly, this world could use in the everyday. Yet generations have grown up inspired by their stories to try and be better, do better, in the image of their fictional heroes. Up on the silver screen, their stories have reached wider audiences than ever before with their messages of justice, equality and integrity.

And some madman with a gun violated that last night when he walked into that theater.

Maybe I’m an idealist. Maybe I put too much stock in comic book heroes and the impact they have on people. But I am not afraid to admit that I was one of those kids growing up with my head in a comic book. I went to see Superman in theaters and marveled at the idea that in these stories, people stood for truth and justice in a big way. I know that I read comic books and dreamed bigger because of the stories presented there. And in my mind, I keep thinking about a kid who might have gone last night to a theater to share in that idealism and who might not be returning home. There is a violation in the destruction of that illusion in the darkness, that safe social construct shared in a theater by those who come to enjoy the dreams on screen.

And it makes me sad and furious.

I have no problem feeling for people who are a thousand miles away who died for no reason last night. In my own city or across the world, they are gone and they were out doing something that celebrates our ability to dream in big pictures and big ways.

My wishes for a full recovery for those wounded and my thoughts to those whose lives were lost. I’m sorry someone couldn’t find it in themselves to share the dream.

Welcome back to the rodeo, I’m your host, let’s play our game

by Shoshana, posted in Writing Update

It’s been a long time since I posted on this blog. I say that a lot. I’m not going to be saying it much anymore.

Welcome to the relaunch of Wisdom in Silence, my writing blog. You can tell it’s no longer called that. Now, it’s just straight up called Shoshana Kessock. That’s me. From now on, this is going to be my blog about being a freelance writer, game designer and geek girl. I’m going to talk here about what it’s like chasing the dream of publishing in the role-playing industry. I’m going to talk about my experience being accepted into the NYU Grad program in Game Design. I’m going to talk about facing down chronic illness while still trying to publish and deal with school. I’m going to talk about the geek world at large. This is going to be my journey and I’m putting it out here for those who want to read it.

But why, you ask? Why would anyone want to read about this kind of struggle? Well, I’ll tell you, I don’t know for certain that people will. I know that I’ve gotten a lot of questions lately about what I’m doing and how I’m doing it. And I find myself answering a lot of the same questions over and over. What projects are you working on? How’s it going? What’s the update on such-and-such? What do you think about this? So here’s a place where it’s all going to go. Here’s the start:

I’m Shoshana Kessock. I’m twenty-nine. I’m starting graduate school at NYU for game design in a matter of weeks. I’m the creator of Phoenix Outlaw Productions, an independent gaming company out to publish and produce quality game products for the world at large. I run the company with my business partner, Josh Harrison. You’ll hear more about all that in future posts. I’m also writing my first gaming book through Phoenix Outlaw Productions. Some folks may have heard of it from me: it’s called Wanderlust and I’m excited to talk more about it’s development.

I also work freelance as a writer and copy editor for Eschaton Media, which publishes the Dystopia Rising tabletop role-playing book and other products. When I’m not doing that, I’m a full-time staffer on the Dystopia Rising Live-Action Role-Play game out in Sparta, New Jersey. I’m also a freelance blogger who writes for Tor.com where I cover comics, LARP, film and various geekery. When I’m not doing all that, I’m writing a novel as well that I’m three quarters of the way finished with and I’m dedicated to getting published. In between, I spend time with my friends, write short stories, live in Brooklyn, read tarot cards and a mountain of books whenever I can. I am also currently trying to learn to play the harmonica. Because harmonicas are cool.

What I’ve been up to lately includes getting ready for graduate school, making some new friends at Dexcon 2012 (updates for that to come) and got myself picked up to go staff at GenCon 2012 in just a few weeks. I will be attending as part of the staff for First Exposure, the independent gaming play test track run by the staff of Double Exposure. I’m excited for the prospect of play testing what I’ve got for my Wanderlust game at that convention just before school starts, and I’m also excited about a couple of projects that I can’t talk about just yet that are on the horizon.

That’s my life. That’s what you’ll be hearing more about. In between I’ll be posting some Flash Fiction challenges from the glorious Chuck Wendig’s blog (because his challenges make my inner writer do a dance of creative excitement) and I’ll be talking about writing challenges and techniques in general too. This blog will be two parts running tally of my life and two parts exploration of what it is to be a female geek and writer.

Sounds good? I do hope so. From here on out, it’s all shooting for the horizon folks. Stick around, won’t you?

Flash Fiction – Whiskey, Trees and Mist

by Shoshana, posted in Flash Fiction, Writings

Once more I’m delving into that realm of Flash Fiction, following a prompt from Chuck Wendig’s blog challenge called “The Crooked Tree”.  So here it is:

Whiskey, Trees and Mist by Shoshana Kessock  (1000 Words)

I come to the old tree on the same day every year to ask it for answers. This is the seventh year. I promise myself I will never come back and know I am lying. I know the routine by heart. It goes something like this:

I say goodbye to my mother and leave our annual get together as the sun goes down. She’s already into her third glass of wine. I’ve been taking drags from my favorite brand of whiskey for hours, on a nice slow burn. I walk the three quarters of a mile into the woods and know every root, every stump, by heart. I go barefoot the way that he did. I will clean the cuts on the soles of my feet later. The stream is cold around my toes.

The clearing is hazy as the sun sinks below the tree line. I stop at the edge of the woods to marvel at how goddamn beautiful something half dead and fallen can be. The entire area smells sunken, edged with animal piss and decaying flowers. It’s cloying and I take a swig from the bottle to keep it from getting up my nose.

I head over to the tree. The first year I came to the clearing, I treated the place like it was sacred. Now, I approach it the way one approaches the scene of a car accident: with wide eyes and a lot of pity for all those involved. The mist plays around my ankles as I skip over the harsher branches. The whiskey’s stronger than I thought and my balance is near gone.

The world spins and I put a hand out to keep from falling. I miss the trunk and reel, then land on my ass on the ground. The bottle, by some miracle, stays intact through my half-assed flail and I cradle it to my chest, eyes wide. I stare around the clearing and hold my breath in the silence. Nothing but the crickets great me in return and I smile, hesitantly, then wide. I raise the bottle to my lips.

“That was some ballerina bullshit right there.”

I choke on the whiskey. It burns up my nose and I cough so hard my eyes water. Laughter flits through the mist at me from the tree line.

“Shit, if I knew trying to kill you was that easy, I’d have done it this way sooner.”

He walks out of the haze and he’s exactly like I remember him. He’s wearing a black t-shirt and jeans with big shit-kicker boots. His long brown hair is pulled back into a ponytail and he’s got the same goatee and mustache as ever. The t-shirt reads “Will Bust Heads For Beer” and he’s got a thick silver watch on. His skin is pale as old milk and the shadows under his eyes make them stand out a startling blue. Some women would say that he’s biker sexy, but I can’t even consider that. I squeeze my eyes closed to push the image of him out of my head and try to clear out the cough.

When I can speak again, I wheeze, “Shouldn’t have scared me. I knew you’d be here.”

“Just like I knew you’d be here too, star angel,” he drawls. He sticks both hands in his pockets as he approaches and saunters, like a cowboy across a saloon. I know because I can’t help but peak out from under my eyelashes. He is all command and swagger and it’s annoying.

I frown. “Do you practice looking like that?”

He stops, uncertain. “Like what?”

“Like you just stepped out of a cleaned up version of Near Dark.” I hold up the bottle. “I’d offer you some, but I know it’s no joy. You won’t mind if I do, though.”

If possible, his frown deepens. “I will mind, if it’s all the damn same.” He closes the distance and stands  over me. I can feel his eyes going over me, taking in the bare feet, the faded jeans that should have been tossed months ago, the wild hair. I see him count the tattoos on my arm. “You’ve got new ones.”

I nod. I don’t show him or tell him their stories. I just take another swig.

“You shouldn’t come back here,” he says. He hunkers down in front of me. “It’s not healthy.”

I snort. “Here’s to you telling me about healthy.” I raise the bottle. “Here’s to you telling me anything. Didn’t you just threaten to kill me?”

His jaw works. “I said if I wanted to kill you. Clean the stuff outta your ears and listen for once.” He doesn’t quite reach for the bottle as much as prod it down away from my mouth with one finger. “Why are you here, star angel?”

I don’t let the bottle lower. I glower over the rim at him. “Don’t call me that.”

“What should I call you?” he cuts back.

“Anything,” I growl, “but that.” Before he can answer, I look up at the tree and wave the bottle at it. “If you must know, I came here to ask the tree my questions.” The smile I give him is a nasty one. “Since you won’t answer any of them, maybe it will.”

He doesn’t answer me. His blue eyes go hard.

I know that he won’t. Seven years and he hasn’t told me a damn thing. But today, of all days, I would love to pretend. I raise the glass. “Happy father’s day, Daddy. Family traditions being what they are, this one sucks.”

My father stares at me, then lets out a deep breath. He sits down with his back against the tree beside me and reaches for the bottle. After a moment’s hesitation, I give it over.

“You can’t taste it,” I remind him.

He scowls at me and flashes a mouth full of shiny vampire fangs. “Yeah, but a man can sure remember.”

——————————————–

And that’s a Happy Father’s Day too! Just a little something for the holiday 🙂

Recharge: Writer Fuel, Burnout and the Importance of Being You

by Shoshana, posted in Random Aside

As I often say when I begin these posts, it’s been a while since I put something together for this blog. Why? Because rather than talking about writing, I’ve taken to heart the idea that you must write instead of speaking about or dissecting the act of writing. There are tons of blogs about writers and the issues of being a writer, but the time put into them takes away from the act of creation. Still, every once in a while, a post about what is going on, what projects I’m up to, and insights into the writing process come across my desk and I think “Hey, when the hell did I update this blog last?!”

Since I started freelancing for Tor.com (one of the best gigs in the world by the way), I’ve had less time to do my own blogging, but I want today to talk about something very important. I want to talk about burnout.

People use that term all the time: burnout. Being fried. Running out of juice. Whatever you call it, writers and creative types talk about being too burnt out to work, unable to come up with any kind of ideas to go forward. I, like other people, have experienced this from time to time. Usually, something will snap me out of it and I will go on about my work without a problem. But lately, I was having a problem. I hit a patch of funk so deep there was no way out of it and I didn’t know what was wrong. And here’s the crazy part: it started when I started getting successful.

I’m not talking like I’ve sold a book kind of successful (though please holy baby snow leopards  let that happen sometime soon). I’ve been blessed lately with several opportunities to work on amazing projects that are fulfilling and challenging and that are giving me the opportunity, as a writer, to stretch my legs and try new mediums with new people. It’s been exciting, and difficult, but overall it’s been a wonderful experience. All of this work, however, has put my life at a very hectic pace. As I’m on disability from my job, I’ve been getting up in the morning, doing a little eating, watching a bit of television, and then writing. I sit in front of my laptop for hours at a time and try to write. And for a while, the whole process was working. I was producing a lot of work.

Over time, it stopped working. I started to slow down in productivity. The work I was producing was getting worse. And my deadlines would get closer, which would mean I would have to rush to get things done. My anxiety started to climb over the feasibility of getting things done and when I would squeak past deadlines, I would barely take a break afterwards before diving back into my work. Eventually, the anxiety became so crippling that I woke up one morning this past week unable to look at my laptop. There was no way, I told myself, that I could get all my work done. There was no chance, I thought, that I could even create anything that could be successful. It became a deep, dark hole of scary depression that I did not want to dance down. I didn’t have a choice — the monkey on my back that writers seem to inherit took me for that ride.

Today was the worst, however. I woke up this morning having slept for nearly twelve hours. I had been unable to sleep the night before due to my anxiety and when I woke up, it was evening. I was confused by the weird sleep schedule, stressed by the work I’d not been doing all day, and furious at myself for getting into this funk to begin with.

In a tizzy I wrote on Facebook “Hates being slowed down due to not ‘feeling up to’ something. It’s vague and hard to describe but no less the case.” And a friend of mine replied that she explained that feeling as the need to recharge.

And I sat back and thought: well, shit. This is it. I’ve worked myself into a burnout.

The fact is, her comment reminded me that I hadn’t done anything to recharge my batteries in weeks. Sure, I’d watch some television and I’d rest. But mostly, I was working. And when I wasn’t working, I was focused on working. I would go out and have lunch with my father, and be thinking about all the work I had to do. And I’d go out to see friends, and be worrying about what I could be doing at home at my laptop. I would eschew going out for events because I had to write things that were on deadline, because I had projects to complete. I had turned aside tabletop roleplaying opportunities, chances to go out to do fun things even by myself, all because I had these projects. And the stress of that kind of pressure I was putting on myself to perform was destroying not only my love of my work, but my actual capability to produce. I had removed the things that recharged my life and let me enjoy what I was doing.

So I forced myself out of the house. I went to see some friends for karaoke. And sure, for a little bit, I was thinking about the projects on my desk. I thought about the chapters in my novel that needed revision, the prep for the upcoming gaming convention in a few weeks that wouldn’t work itself out. And then, two friends of mine showed up and announced their engagement. And I remembered that life comes before work and that life is as important as the legacy of writing I’m going to put out into the world. I promptly forgot my work for a little while and focused on the night ahead of me. In the end, I had a marvelous time.

In the cab home, I spoke with one of the women who was at the party. She had a game idea she wanted to write. And when I started to talk to her about game design and writing, I felt that old spark of creative fire I had before. I remembered why I enjoyed doing this. And I remembered that chaining myself to my computer wasn’t going to help me find inspiration for my work. I couldn’t slave-drive myself to get results. My writing could not be whipped out of me and there is a difference between enforcing discipline in my craft and punishing myself with some kind of self-imposed creative forced march. Somewhere, I would start to hate my work and I had to remember that life had more than just eating, sleeping and writing.

Recharging is any little thing that helps light you up inside. Whether that’s reading or going out walking or playing with cats or seeing your friends or going to a show. Whatever it is, it needs to be done to keep the creative juices flowing. Otherwise you start to get frustrated, the taps close and you’re suddenly wondering why the faucet of creative ideas just started turning into the barest trickle. To be a good writer, you need to take care of you. Get up, take breaks, and don’t forget that the rest of the world exists.

Lesson learned. I’m taking tomorrow to hang with my best friend and tonight, before I go to bed, I’m catching up on some of my favorite graphic novel right now (B.P.R.D.) before I get some decent sleep. I’m going to do chores in the morning and when I sit down to work, I’m going to make sure it’s after I’ve stretched and gotten some sunlight. Bizarre as it might sound, I’m going to try looking after myself more and hope that encourages my muse, or my daemon as Elizabeth Gilbert likes to call them, will look after me. I write this in the hope that, anyone out there feeling the same in their work might see the similarities in my experience and heed perhaps the call for self-care. We have ourselves to look after as custodians of our work. Let’s take the time to do it.

Facebook is the devil for writing

by Shoshana, posted in Random Aside

Facebook may indeed be the devil or at least it may be for writers.

Stop me if this sounds like something that’s happened to you:

You sit down at your computer and all you want to do is write. All these wonderful ideas in the back of your head just want to get out and you are raring to go. Then comes the little ping: you get a Facebook update. You say “I’m just going to check it for two seconds.” Half an hour later you’re looking at some silly video of foxes jumping on a trampoline, giggling your head off having completely forgotten that you had a deadline. Hell you may have forgotten your own damn name because, well, they’re foxes and they’re adorable.

That is what Facebook is for. It tells us all about the world according to Jim, Bob and Sue but keeps you from reaching the inner worlds you can create. I am a notorious Facebook camper. When I take a break from writing, I can usually be found making snarky comments about geek-related nonsense on Twitter or posting ‘artistic’ pictures on Instagram like the hipster I pretend not to be morphing into. But mostly I can be found on Facebook catching up with folk or just posting every random piece of weirdness that skims my brain. Oh yeah and videos of cute animals. There’s like a law about those being mandatory.

But then I try to get back to writing and sometimes, all I can think about is the Facebook stuff. I’m so distracted by the poke wars, the liking, the pseudo-political arguments and the kittens being adorable. And then how can I get literary? The answer is I can’t.

So here’s to Facebook eating my productivity. I will be making an effort to block my Internet- something author Joe Hill mentioned on Twitter today- so it doesn’t distract. And my phone will go away from me. To quote a friend of mine’s play, I am of the generation that seems to have their phone surgically attached to their hand. I will go into the writer trance and have to answer some messages. Worse things could happen.

Like not finishing my damn novel.

Flash Fiction Challenge: “Read For Me”

by Shoshana, posted in Flash Fiction, Writings

This is a revamp of a previous short story idea that I had once, entitled “Read For Me”, revamped for Chuck Wendig’s most recent Flash Fiction challenge. The idea is 1000 words or under in the present tense. So here it is!

 

Read For Me

by: Shoshana Kessock

“I want you to read for me.”
The man sits down across from me and blocks out the cold breeze from the open door. Snow streams down the stairs and into the cafe. I wonder if the little fountain in the window will freeze solid or keep streaming. The man is large enough to block out the chill, the wind, the snow. He makes the chair creak.

“Did you come all this way for a reading?” I ask.

“How do you know how far I’ve come?” His eyes grow wide. “You saw it. I thought you needed cards for that.”

I shake my head and say nothing. Should I tell him that his shoes bear the signs of a long walk in the bad weather? They are caked with slush, the leather expensive and impractical. His jacket is the same way. This is a man not used to walking in weather like this. I imagine a town car, then spot his watch and upgrade him to a limosene.

“I don’t always need the cards,” I reply finally. They lay on the zebra-striped tabletop between us, just beside the little red lamp and a glass of merlot. I put a hand on them, then look up to catch the man’s eyes. They’re small, beady, and set over bags that could charitably be called matched luggage. Either he is genetically cursed or else he does not sleep. “You still want me to read them, though.” I don’t need a gift to see that he’s desperate.

He nods and when he does, his jowls flap. “I was told you’re the best.” He reaches for his wallet inside his suit pocket and fumbles. I see fifties beside a row of twenties deeper than my thumbnail. “I’m prepared-”

“I can see that.” Whatever he wants is serious and I frown. “Why? Something serious, isn’t it? Something-”

Suddenly I don’t like it, or him. I want him to go away. The instinct cuts through me and I rub the back of my neck. It’s a tell gesture, I know, for nervousness. I long ago learned to block them out but he drives me to it. His need, in his eyes, drives me near the edge of fear.

My fingers stroke the top card. I pick it up.

The Tower. It would be the Tower. I drop the card again, face down, and fight the urge to bury my face in my hands.

“Something real,” I say, “this isn’t just something foolish. This is something real.”

The man nods and I see beyond the jowls, beyond the suit. The clues are there for those who look. Some people come to me for nothing, for the end of their marriage or the beginning of a relationship. Some people want a roadmap to the next step of their happiness. This man wants a roadmap back to something to live for because he has lost it along the way.

Lost it or it was taken.

“It’s my daughter,” he replies. His voice is a hoarse croak. “She’s disappeared.”

And I know I will help him. I know it is the only proper thing to do and know I will lose time, lose hours, lose more. In the way I know things, I know I could lose everything.

I flip over the top card again. The Tower stares up at me.

In a moment I see it all. I see the axis of my life shift, see the fulcrum that is this man’s child change the fabric of my days to come.

I see myself buried elbow-deep in snow, see myself at the edge of a small quay in chilly sunlight with my bare feet in the water. I see beautiful curls that lie in a porcelain sink and a Bible, thick as my wrist. I see pants on the floor big as a circus tent and a teddy bear beside them, and I feel vomit rise in my throat. I see a steak knife, a dinner plate, and a perfect dish of ravioli. I smell Vicks Vapor Rub and camphor and hear the rattle of old person breathes.

All these things I see and think: all the kings horses and all the kings men.

The Tower means change and destruction. It means an oft violent shift. It means the tearing down of the old to the new. And this man does not know that. He doesn’t understand that the card I pull is not for him but for me. This story will not be his, or even his daughters. This moment is the breeze that blows me onward.

I look around at the cafe around me and want to take it with me. I like the zebra tables, the red little lamps, and the glasses of wine at all hours. I like their tea that tastes like comfortable elderly relatives and warm and their funny waiters, all with their dreams of New York lives. And in the way I know things, I know I will not be back after tonight.

I call myself stupid and drain my wine glass. Then I flip over more cards with practiced, nimble fingers.

I don’t look up but inside, I say goodbye.

“Put your money away,” I say, “and let’s begin.”

Brand New November, Brand New NaNo

by Shoshana, posted in Writing Update, Writings

November has once again come upon us and it is time for nano to commence. I’ve always been a huge fan of nano and the opportunity that it gives tentative writers to get their fears out in one giant explosion of writing. The question has been presented to me however… Am I past nano and what it can offer me?

In years past Netto has been a great opportunity for me to get past my writers block and focus on one project for one month. There have been many times when I was scared to go forward with a project because it seems too large or too unwillingly. Yet in recent years despite long jags of writers block I haven’t been having the same problem with getting my ideas out. In fact it seems whenever I do sit down to get a project out I’ve been able to produce large bodies of work very quickly.

For example, I decided this month that I was going to forgo NaNo. It was a conscious choice on my part since I was swamped with other projects such as blogging and going to work and beginning the gaming book that I’m writing — which I will speak more about later. However, day before last I sat down to put what I believed was going to be the beginnings of an upcoming project onto paper. I had no intention of starting a new project altogether! My brain apparently had other intentions.

I ended up putting down nearly 20,000 words into a new project that I am calling, for now, “The Lakeside.” I did all that in approximately 36 hours.

At a recent convention that I attended I spoke to a writing editor who asked me why I was still doing nano if I was not having problems producing. I said I enjoyed it and that was the reason that I kept up with the project year after year. I enjoyed the creative spirit and communal support that nano offered. However what she said stuck in my mind. Is nano really only for those folk having trouble producing work?

The fact is, before my 20,000 word jag I was having trouble producing. I was stuck in anxiety-laiden writers block over all the work I wanted to do. I was having difficulty finding the right words to bring my ideas to paper. Nano this month did give me the impetus to go forward and start on a new project once again. Only at this point maybe the 50,000 word word count is not quite a challenge anymore.

I am planning on finishing this project For NaNo this month, whether that means finishing it at the very last minute like I did last year or finishing it in two days as seems to be what might happen. The Lesson I’m going to take away from this is that I don’t need to be hampered by large word goals, nor by anxiety about producing work. I think I’m proving right now that I can be prolific. The trick now is to be more precise with my work. NaNo does teach you to produce a lot of words at once but it does not teach you how to be specific with those words. Right now I need to focus on quality over quantity.

So will I do NaNo next year? I don’t know. But for right now “The Lakeside” has 20,000 words down and it’s only the middle of the month. I started two days ago. Let’s see where this goes.

Speak Out With Your Geek Out: Fantasy Writing, Like Bowties, Is Cool

by Shoshana, posted in Writing Testimonial

Sorry for the little Doctor Who quote there, but it’s a good way to get things rolling. On my other blog, ReImagined Reality, I posted up my very first Speak Out With Your Geek Out post. The idea behind Speak Out With Your Geek Out is to support geekery in all its forms everywhere across the Internet. I began my other post like any Ten-Step Program would, so I’ll keep up the tradition…

Hi, my name is Shoshana and I write geek.

I don’t mean that I write like a geek, or that I write stories about people biting the heads off of live animals. No, I write geek in all forms in that I write science fiction, fantasy, horror and blog posts about everything geeky. I have written geek since I was knee high on a dog tiny. I started writing fantasy stories when I was in grade school. I re-wrote scenes from movies and comics and books that I didn’t like to include things I wanted to see (I didn’t even know that the term for that was fanfic by the way until MUCH later). I did all this because in my heart of hearts, I knew one thing – I had ideas. And they wanted to get out.

And my ideas were not happy relationship stories about women and men in everyday lives. They weren’t stories about children coming of age in a modern, normal world. Nope, my stories had witches and demons, robots and dragons, mutants and super heroes. To me, my stories had a drama that the every day world did not come anywhere close to exhibiting (and that’s the good drama, folks, not the sad silly drama). And when I was younger, I thought I was utterly alone in liking what I liked.

See, I grew up religious. And where I came from, people didn’t read Tolkien often. When I was reading the Chronicles of Narnia, other people looked at me funny. It wasn’t something they really trended on much and I felt like kind of a freak for having my head in realities that didn’t exist. In high school, though, I got lucky enough to meet another girl in my all-girls school who liked similar things. I felt less like a freak. She’s still my friend, over fifteen years later, and more like family. And all because we both spoke the same language, the language of looking at geek and digging it.

So I’ve written. And it’s not easy sometimes. People joke that all of my work is on some wacked out other planet. I’ve never written something that doesn’t have a supernatural bent to it, and that’s okay. I think that writing has to come from what you love and I love the unreal. I think that writing things that don’t exist in this world lets our minds expand and consider things that might never have been considered. The fantasy brings home concepts, criticisms or ideas that we might otherwise want to sweep under the rug, that we might never want to address. In the race to open our minds to accept bizarre vampire stories or alien love triangles, we writers manage to slip in themes about acceptance, prejudice, violence and ethical quandries for the audience to ponder.

And then, sometimes, we just want to write about demon dogs and hell beasts. Y’know, because that’s what tickles our noses.

The day’s come where I now write commentary on other people’s geek too. And that’s just as satisfying, where I get to talk about what I like and don’t like about the geek world around me. Sure, it’s not as satisfying as creating. Its not a short story done or a game development session come to fruition. It isn’t a novel nearly completed (oh God let me get it done soon!) but it is geek and it is good writing too. It is the spore-spreading of good geek content across the internet waves and that brings us as nerdlings together. So in the end, it is also words well spent.

I write geek. And I enjoy it. And I don’t think I could ever stop. After all, if you’re at something for so long, you start to look back and wonder what your life would be like without that thing, that one thing that lit you up for so long. And you honestly can’t imagine your life without it. That’s me and my writing, vampires and woogity demons and all.

May I never stop.