April 23rd, 2010 by Neal
I’ve done a lot of thinking over the last few days, mostly spurred by a good conversation with friend Will. I’m pondering what I hold to be my concepts of self-worth, I’m looking into the way I focus on things. Constantly trying to prove, I’ve been confronted with contradictory logic in my own methodology of thinking, and I’ve been exploring it a little. I won’t cover much of it here, but one point that came out was remarkably astute.
I’m focusing on the numbers. For me, it’s a tool to give myself a gauge of where I am. I say “Your goal is ten pages, or 3,000 words, or one draft.” Etc. The outward impression, however, I realize, can easily be seen as “Aha! I’ve written two books in a year. Behold, my superior power!” This is not my intention, so I’m seriously questioning my use of the pie charts, especially given that the outward impression (False or true) that could come of it is that I am churning books out less concerned with quality.
As my sunken eyes and broken demeanor prove, this is not the case. I am literally killing myself for these books. Nonetheless, writing is a form of communication, and if I can’t communicate what I feel as opposed to what I am actually doing, that’s a failure of writing. The IDEA was to let people know I have work coming down the pike, and to give them a conceptualization of how hard I’m working to get it out there. The REALITY is that it kind of looks like I’m rushing. I dunno. I worked hard to produce 3,000 good words a day, but it’s hard to conceptualize, I know, on a regular basis.
I’m still not sure what to do, beyond noting what I’m working on in a less numerical way. It springs from my long time obsession with statistics and running numbers. I love baseball statistics, budgeting, word counts, gas mileage, timing trips. It’s an OCD thing I’ve always had I can’t get rid of, but I don’t have to inflict it on others, especially when it might give a negative impression.
I think I’ll keep it up for this book, and then just have a draft number for future books in the “Works in Progress” tab.
It IS quality, not quantity, and I don’t have to justify how hard I’m working to anyone but myself. That urge comes from my past, and I apologize for it. I do my work, that’s all I need to do. Consider it the last hiccup of my earlier predilection to try and fight battles I couldn’t win on message boards. I hope to hell it’s a sign of maturity as an artist. We’ll see.
This is your cue to write “U SUK!” and let me not respond.
I had a startling moment of revelation goofing around on Warcraft two days ago, actually, about this. WoW has this thing called the random dungeon, where, if you don’t have enough people to run an instance (a five character dungeon), you can sign up for random people who also want to do a dungeon. You invariably implode half the time, because getting five sane, normal, intelligent people on the internet is like, I dunno, flipping for heads 200 times.
It used to lead me to rather stirring rage, to the point that I quit the game for years. Now I’m more calm. Reassured. I can just drop out of a group of assholes and not give a shit.
Anyway, back to two days ago. I was in this instance, and I was JUST level 80. Part of the endgame is spending tens of thousand of hours grinding for gear, and when you just hit 80, you’re going to be low in “DPS,” or damage per second. I drop in, and the first thing I see is some leet geared DPS guy typing incoherent phrases and sentences. Like, this is some of the worst grammar I have ever seen, even on WoW. He says something fractured about asking why my gear sucks. I write one sentence, “Just hit eighty. Trying to get geared. That’s why I’m here! :)”
The response, verbatim: “ur to stupid to insalt” sans period.
This is like “your retarded” taken to the point of trolling, but he’s absolutely serious.
My response was to just laugh, leave the group, and move on to something else. A while back, I would have probably engaged the guy and used my command of language to try and smite him. I didn’t, and I’m very proud of that.
Now, as Will would probably chide me, “Why the fuck are you talking about it two days later, then! Stop telling us how much it’s not affecting you as a way to tell you how much it’s not affecting you.” True. I cite this example more as a piece of humor.
The truth is, I’ve found me sweet spot where I don’t care any more. It took so long. I still have hiccups. But I realize the last time I talked about something ruining my day, making me lose writing because of bullshit, was almost a half a year ago, and that was an isolated incident.
I’m also past a lot of the dysfunctional shit that pervaded a lot of my thought process. Each year I can look back and see improvement. I regret things I used to suck at, but I’m glad things are getting better. I’m learning to interact in ways that were beyond me years ago, and a lot of that maturity and change comes of the decision to let go, come to Portland, and find a new life.
Even when I’m feeling down (and I have a lot, of late, at random times, mostly because Kristen is gone a lot at work and school, and I’ve had some shitty bills killing me), that’s a point of optimism.
The next Hal book, not coincidentally, is called “Live in Hope.” I don’t know if I’ll write it next (I have a few ideas I’m mulling), but it’s there, nonetheless, and important.
Hope.
Things get better. They do.
