Soul (a movie review post)

 

Pixar has not been my favorite production company of late. After spending more than a decade as Hollywood's golden child that could do no wrong, they ended that run with Toy Story 3. Their movies after that, with only a few exceptions, became formulaic and, well, boring. I've said previously that I believe that was due to the loss of John Lasseter as their creative guide. I still mostly stand by that. Since 2010, only three of their movies stand out as something more than ordinary. Two of those were by Pete Docter, this being one of them.

The first thing I'm going to say is how... wonderful... yes, wonderful, it is to have a movie "about" jazz that isn't made by fucking Damien Chazelle. There's nothing in this about how the white savior man is going to save jazz from... I don't know. It was never really clear what Chazelle thought he was saving jazz from. Itself, probably, since Chazelle seems to believe that jazz was made for the white man, and it can't be trusted in the hands of the people who invented it.

This movie isn't really about jazz and doesn't have a whole lot of jazz in it. Which is fine, because I'm not much of a jazz fan. I don't hate it or anything, but it's not something I'm just going to turn on if I feel like some music. In fact, the movie isn't about music at all. It's about dreams. Life dreams, not the ones you have when you're asleep and forget promptly when you wake up. Or, maybe, it's about inspiration. That's the word, or a word, they use in the movie. 

But that's not really right, either. The movie is about living your life and not just... drifting through it. It's about not letting fear get in the way of pursuing the things that spark you. From a casual distance, it's a beautiful movie. It has some endearing and some poignant moments.

It also has some issues, which I will try to point out without being spoilery.

Joe is a musician, a jazz musician. He's been chasing that lucky break all his life. His mother wants him to get a real job. A permanent one. Not that he doesn't work. He teaches music, but he's not, evidently, a permanent teacher or anything like that. The conflict at the opening of the movie is that he's been offered a permanent teaching position, and he's torn over whether to accept it or not because, for some reason, if he acceptd a position as a music teacher he'll have to, for whatever reason, no longer accept gigs playing in clubs and bars. Um... The dude's not married and has no kids. This is an artificial conflict. Do I give up on my dream of being a "musician" by taking the teaching job or not?

There is also the subtle implication that Joe has not been adequately pursuing his dream because he hasn't been successful at becoming a "musician." There are scenes of him doing other life stuff, like watching TV and doing laundry, which are there to suggest that these are times when Joe was failing to pursue his calling. What the fuck is that about? No one can spend 24/7 doing one thing and one thing only. That he has not "made it" is not because he has not adequately pursued his dream.

And there is the complete dismissal of the importance Joe has played in the lives of the students he's taught and their own inspiration toward music because of him. It's like those things, though important, do not actually matter because those things have come at the expense of Joe's own success. Or something like that.

Maybe I'm being too harsh, but I don't really think these are good messages to be handing out. Not that I think these are messages that are really intended, but the framework of the movie delivers them anyway. If you are not famous and "successful," you have failed your dream. You have failed to pursue it adequately. It's our cultural belief, and it's ingrained in the movie, which is too bad, because there could have been a deeper message.

All of which may sound like I didn't like the movie, which would be incorrect. It's one of the top three Pixar movies of the past decade, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It came close to bringing tears to my eyes. I would gladly watch it again. And I might, since it's streaming on Disney+. None of which changes the fact that I wish that Docter had gone just a little bit further with the movie and not relied so heavily on our societal views of achievement and success. It's a really good movie, just not a great one.

Writing and the Inspiration Dilemma

There are whole schools of thought about writers and inspiration and waiting for inspiration and when to write and where inspiration comes from and whether it's even necessary. As with most things, there's a spectrum here, with people who believe you should never sit down to write unless you're feeling inspired on one side, and those, on the other side, who believe you should treat writing like a job and sit down and do the work whether you're inspired or not.

Let's take a practical look at this.

But before we go on, let me just say that I have nothing against inspiration. I like it. It's great to be inspired and have lovely (or terrifying) ideas to sit down and play with. But I can almost never sit down to do the writing when I have those ideas. I think most of my ideas these days happen when I'm in the car. You can ask my wife; I make her send me notes when I have ideas and we're not home, so she would probably know best whether that most frequently happens in the car or not. I mean, the car is not the best place to write, not if you want to live through your trip.

I used to know this guy. A "writer." He strongly believed in the waiting-for-inspiration-to-strike-before-doing-any-writing model. He talked about it a lot, actually, about how he would lean back in his chair at his desk and wait for the inspiration to come to him. Wait for the universe to open and flood his head with ideas and words. He'd sit that way for hours. If no inspiration came, he didn't do any writing. As time went on, more and more often, his posts about his writing life were only about how he was never inspired and couldn't find any inspiration and was, as a consequence, never writing.

He's not a writer anymore. I'm not sure he could ever have been called a "writer" since he has no completed work to show for his time as a "writer."

The problem is that I know a lot of people like that, people who quit writing because they relied heavily on being inspired and never did any of the work of writing. It's like this:
Writing is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
And, well, inspiration doesn't come unless you're doing the work.

So you can probably guess which side of the spectrum I'm on.
The truth is that if you look at successful writers, the writers who make a living from their writing, with few exceptions, these are the people who sit down to do the work of writing whether they're "feeling inspired" or not.

"Writers" who wait for the inspiration to happen first lead lives of not writing and, thus, never have anything to show for being a "writer." Sure, they may have a few pages of this or a few pages of that, but you can't legitimately call yourself a writer if you can't finish anything. You can be a writer without ever publishing anything, but you can't be a writer without work to show for it.

Which brings me to my actual point.

The other day, I heard a bit of an interview with a "voter" about why he hadn't voted in an election. He said it was because none of the candidates had inspired him...
Wait, what?
Yes, he said he didn't vote because he hadn't felt inspired by any of the candidates to get out and vote.

Which I realized is what has bothered me so much about last November's presidential election, people complaining that they didn't like either candidate so they hadn't bothered to vote at all. These people are "voters" in much the same way as a writer waiting for inspiration is a writer, which is to say not at all.

Look, it's not a candidates job to be inspirational. It's not the campaign's job to inspire you. Sure, I get that it can help. Like I said, I have nothing against inspiration. It's great.
But that's not what voting is about!
As a voter, it's your job to make the best decision from the available candidates and to go out and vote!

For example, if you have two candidates and you've rated them on a scale of 1-10 and one of them is a 0 (because Trump didn't even make the scale) and the other is a 2 or, even, a 1, you go out and vote for the better one (not that I thought that Clinton was so low as a 1 or a 2, but I know a lot of people felt that way). You don't wait for a 7 or higher to come along and inspire you before going out and doing your job, because it is your job. If you have two candidates whom you don't like and one of them is an authoritarian fascist asshole, you go out and cost your ballot for the other candidate.

Period.

You want to know how I know? Because France just did just that! FRANCE! Dudes... if France can do it, if France can do the right thing, certainly we here in the United States of goddamn fucking America ought to be able to do the same thing. Ought to be able to.
Because, obviously, we're not capable of that, as the even more recent election of Greg Gianforte kind of demonstrates.
Seriously, what the fuck?
And you call yourselves Americans?
If the people of France can get themselves out to vote for Emmanuel Macron, a guy no one really liked, for the sole purpose of keeping Marine Le Pen out of office, then no one in the United States has any excuse.

When the choice is between the lesser of two evils, you fucking vote for the lesser of two evils.

So all of you people who didn't vote need to own up to your lack of doing your fucking jobs as citizens of the United States and get up off your asses now and register your protest against the fascist asshole "running" the country.
Running it into the ground.

Sorry (not sorry), fuck inspiration. And that goes to you "writers," too.
Do the work.
If you do the work, the inspiration will eventually come.

Writing What We Feel

Today, I'm taking a comment someone made completely out of context. Not because I'm twisting anyone's words, but, because, the words gave me a thought that was, really, at a tangent to what was meant by the original comment. But it's a thought worth talking about, because this is one of the things I see tossed around on blogs all of the time.

Here's a paraphrase of the comment (because I didn't write it down, and I'm not going to go back looking for it): I can't write what I'm not in the mood to write.

There is some truth to that, I suppose. At least, at first, there is some truth to that. When you first start to write, it's very difficult to write when you're not in the mood for it or when you need to write something that is counter to your current mood. It becomes like an assignment for school, at that point, which means it's no fun. Who wants to write when it's no fun, right?

Well, here's the thing, if you want to be an author that writes books instead of book. Or an author that is able to put out a steady stream of books, you can't let your mood, your feelings, get in the way of writing. There will just be days when you don't feel like writing. You don't feel creative. You feel like everything you're putting on the screen is garbage.

Before I go on, let me back up a moment. I believe that every writer needs to find their own way of doing things. Some writers choose to not write every day, and, if that's what works for them, if that's their style, that's the way they should do it. However, that being said, I think a lot of people that want to be writers don't write every day not because it's their choice of style, but, because, they don't know how to get past how to write when they're not feeling inspired.

And, yes, for those of you that have been here for a while, I have talked about this before, but it's been a long time (and I don't remember in what post), and I think it's something that probably needs repeating every so often. Besides, not only do I have that comment to inspire me, I also have Monday's post keeping it in my mind.

As I mentioned, writing is not one of those things that comes easily to my son. Or to me. He likes doing it. Except, well, when he's doing it. He likes his ideas, and he likes his results, but the act of getting started... it's horrific. Although, there are some people that can sit down and write on demand, my son is not one of them. That makes completing writing assignments a huge obstacle and requires much pushing and prodding by me for him to do them. Not just ones he's doing for my class but any writing assignment. See, he thinks he needs to feel like writing, to be in the mood, before he can do it. The thing I have to tell him over and over (and when I say over and over, I mean over and over (for years, now)) is to just start writing.

Just start writing and it will come to you. It's so counter-intuitive. But I know, because I'm the same way. And I struggle with it. Staring at the screen trying to figure out how I want to start. Of course, at this point in my life, I've worked out a few tricks to get me going (listening to music, unfortunately, is not one of them (as I discussed way back here)). The prevailing wisdom is that we get inspiration and, then, we write. And, sure, that can happen. That's where my global ideas come from, after all. But it doesn't handle the day-to-day stuff.

The problem with that thinking, though, the waiting for inspiration to happen thinking, is that if we wait for it, it won't happen often enough that we will ever accomplish anything of note. I know that, too, because that's what I used to believe. It's why I have several unfinished projects from my misguided writing youth, including a great story about a dragon that I still want to get back to one day.

However, when we just start writing, just start, inspiration comes. It sneaks in during the act somewhere, and, eventually, we find that we've WRITTEN! I watch this happen with my son all the time. Of course, I have to tell him about 20 times (okay, 50 times) to "just start" before he actually does. Like I said, painful. But after... after, he always says he should have listened and just started, because, once he started, he was able to write.

And this is why I say that writers should not write when they feel like it. They should not write when they're in  the mood. And they should not write only what they're in the mood to write. Writers should just write. Just start. You be the one in charge. Don't be at the whim of something as fickle as inspiration. Take control of it. Start writing and inspiration will come find you, because inspiration doesn't want to be left out. Seriously.

I'm not going to tell you when or how to write, those are things you have to figure out for yourself. I will say that I don't really get to write when I would choose to write if I could choose to do it at a time of my choosing. There are too many things that get in the way. Like kids. But, when I have time for it, I do it. And, I'm finding, it gets easier and easier to do whenever I am choosing to do it.

A lot of people will tell you that you have to treat it like a job. Treat writing like a job. And, on this point, they're correct. When you sit down to write, treat it like a job. That means that you do it despite your feelings and you work on what needs to be worked on even if you'd rather be writing something else. Just like at work where you have to do what needs to be done despite how you feel about it. Yes, it takes discipline and practice, but it's a point you have to arrive at if you ever want to have any real success with your writing.

Now, having said all of that, I will point out, again, that every writer has to figure out what works best for him/her. I know of at least one writer (okay, I only know of one, but he proves the exception to the rule) that treats the whole writing thing as a hobby. He says that if it was at all like work to him that he wouldn't do it at all, because work is not fun, and writing is fun, and he does it because it's fun. And he seems pretty good at completing projects. I do, however, think he's the exception (yes, Briane, I'm looking at you), not the rule. Most of us just can't work that way. [For instance, my hobby is painting miniatures (you can see examples of some by clicking my crafty tab). I haven't done any painting in at least 3 years.]

I'll also throw in that how you handle your blog, if your blogging is related to your writing, reflects on your writing. If you're blogging to support your writing (in whatever way or form), your blog is the lens through which the world will perceive your other written works, so you have to come at it just like you do your other writing. If your blog is just something fun you do, it doesn't matter so much. But, really, the whole blogging thing is a separate topic that I may get around to posting about at some point.

I'm also gonna add that writer's block is just what happens when you sit down and wait for inspiration to happen first. You're better than that. So, like I tell me son, "Just start writing!" Just sit down and do it. Do worry about what it is that you're putting down, just start writing. It'll work itself out as you go, and you can always go back and spruce up those first few sentences or whatever you did while you were getting warmed up. Don't over think it. Don't fret about it. Don't try to figure it all out. Just sit down and start. Yes, do it now. Just start writing...

She sits and waits...

[Before I get into the post, I want to remind you that it's Thursday. Oh, you already knew that? Well, being Thursday, it's the day I update the Tiberius tab with the next installment of his story. No, I didn't update it last week, so, yes, technically, I'm a week behind. It's going to stay that way. Tib is not my only writing project, so you'll just have to deal. Also, I'd love more feedback about Tib. You can leave it, well, anywhere, really. Except on the Tib page. Because I haven't figured out how to allow comments on the non-post pages, yet. I'll get around to it. Figuring out how to get the PayPal button up for signed copies of The House on the Corner used up all of my allotment for fiddling with tech stuff for... well, a couple or few weeks, at least. Speaking of signed copies, The House on the Corner would make a great Christmas gift, so order your signed copy now! (while I still have them on hand)]

I promise this isn't going to become a blog all about dogs. I did manage to make it more than a month before devoting an entire post to her, after all. But I did have a thought, a particular thought, about the dog when I came out of the bathroom the other day. In fact, it was what the last post was supposed to be about, but I got all caught up in the story of getting the dog and figured 2000 words was enough for one post. Before I go on, how about another look at her?

Dogs have a pretty uncanny ability at figuring people out. They are the only non-primate animal (maybe the only animal, but I'm sure about the non-primate part) that scan faces in the same way that humans do. It allows them to have great empathy for human emotion and is what has made them such a great companion for humanity for the last 15,000 years.
It also allows them to quickly discern their alpha.

Before we had even left the shelter with Tessa, she had already determined that I was her alpha. I'm pretty sure she decided that she was going home with us before I decided it. She just knew. Being the alpha for a dog can be a lot of responsibility, and other people can't always fill in. Some breeds, like Chows, can be very hostile to anyone other than their alpha. Fortunately, Tessa isn't one of those obsessively clingy, needy dogs that has to be attached to its alpha 24/7.

We picked Tessa up the weekend before my kids went on fall break, which was nice, because they had a full week with her right off the bat. It gave Tessa a chance to get acclimated to "her people." Still, the first time I had to go off and leave her with them, she freaked my kids out. I just had to make a quick trip to the store to pick something up. I was gone, maybe, 20 minutes, but she sat at the front door and, according to my kids, howled and moaned the whole time I was gone. She was so happy to see me when I got back that I believe them. The dog did have to learn that it's not going to be abandoned, and, I'm sure, that's worse for a shelter dog that has already been abandoned and had all sorts of strange people dealing with it for months. I can't really imagine the kind of panic the dog must have been going through when I went off without her.

She has learned that I'm coming back, and I can leave the house, now, without having to worry about her crying and howling the whole time I'm gone. But that first week was rough. I couldn't even go to the bathroom without her whimpering at the door the entire time I was in there. It was kind of like having an infant again. Just a furry, mobile one.

The other thing with being the alpha is that her attention tends to always shift to me. For instance, if one of the kids is playing with her and I walk by, she runs over to me to see if I will play with her instead. I have to be careful, because I want the kids to have a good relationship with the dog, so I don't want to pull her away from them. As I've said, though, she's smart, and she's learned that my daughter is, in many ways, her personal playmate. If anyone is playing with the dog, my daughter cannot keep herself out of it. She's the only other person in the house besides me that's willing to play rough with the dog, too. My younger son is her cuddle monster. If she wants loves, she goes to him. He's also good for catch, but not as good as she'd like for tug and wrestling, so that's my daughter. The oldest is really only good for the occasional pat on the head. He's a teenager; what can I say?

But to get to the point...
The other day I was coming out of the bathroom, and there she was on the floor in front of the door waiting for me (That's much more likely to happen during  the day when it's just me and the dog here at home). It occurred to me that people are just like that. Sitting and waiting. All the time. For something. For someone. For anything, really. We make our lives dependent on some other alpha.

Sometimes, that alpha is a person. We wrap ourselves up and become dependent on them for, well, everything. We don't have to make decisions that way, and we don't have to be responsible that way, and, let's face it, life's just a lot easier if you leave things to someone else to take care of. Honestly, I think most people live their lives like this.

Sometimes, it's a job. That's slightly better than when it's a person, but not by much.

Sometimes, it's... well, we don't know what it is. We're just waiting for it, and we don't know what it is. Maybe, that's really the lack of an alpha. A person that wants or needs one, some one or some thing to give him direction, so he just drifts along waiting for it to happen.

And authors suffer from this problem as much as anyone, maybe more. We make our writing dependent on "inspiration." That was the specific thought that struck me when I saw my dog waiting for me outside of the bathroom. That I was her muse, and she was waiting for me to lay some inspiration on her. I do have to say that it makes the whole being a writer thing a lot easier. When you can blame your lack of productivity on a lack of inspiration. "Hey, it's not my fault. I'm waiting for inspiration."

Now, I'm not knocking inspiration. It's great to write when you're feeling inspired. I am knocking sitting around and waiting for inspiration to happen, though. And I've lost count of the number of blogs I've seen with the author complaining about not being able to write because she (and I'm saying "she" because I haven't seen this on any of the blogs of male authors that I follow (I don't know why that is, but I'd like to know)) "hasn't been inspired lately." Look, no responsibility!

Here's what I've found interesting. When I'm home working during the day, the dog lays around most of the time waiting for some attention. Waiting for her inspiration to strike, so to speak. When she's just laying around, I tend to not notice her. Meaning, I'm busy writing, and I leave her to lay there. I do have other things to do besides play tug with her all day, after all. However, sometimes, she'll get up, go get her ball, and start tossing it around. It's very cute, and, guess what, I notice her. When she decides to stop laying there waiting for me and to take some initiative, it draws my attention, and, usually, I'll go over and play with her for a bit. Even when I'm busy. Because I just can't help it.

That's how inspiration works. It doesn't come to us when we're just waiting. Why would it? It would have to come over and slap us around to get our attention. Inspiration doesn't want to do that. Inspiration wants to see us working on something. When we are, it says "ah-ha!" and wants to get involved and comes over to play with us and, pretty soon, we're typing away with inspiration sitting on our shoulders egging us on. And, you know, if inspiration doesn't come along, we often come out with good stuff anyway, because we're capable of writing some pretty cool stuff all on our own. But none of that happens when we're just waiting for it.

Put yourself in inspiration's shoes. Who are you going to pick: the guy just laying there or the guy trying to make something happen?

To approach it more objectively, though, most of the time, it really takes writing to be able to write. What? I was having a conversation with someone recently, and he was saying how he'd really like to write someday. He's someone that just discovered I've written a book and was all excited to know a "real" author. Long conversation ensued. I've actually had several of these conversations with people at this point, people that think that one day, some day, they'd like to write. But they're waiting for something. And they don't really know what it is they're waiting for. Except that what it is that they're waiting for is for someone else to come in and show they how to do it or what to do or... whatever. They're waiting for that nudge to get them going.

That thing, that whatever it is, is different for each person, but it's always something that comes from inside that person. That moment when they figure out that they have to quit waiting. And, as I said, it's not just writing, it's everything. It's life. So, quit waiting for life to happen to you and make it happen. Get up and do something. Write something. Be something. Take the ball in your mouth and start tossing it around. It's cute, just ask my dog; someone will notice and want to join in.

"Do or do not! There is no try."

One of the more common themes I see as I hop around the bloggypads is that of people waiting for inspiration to strike. Or for some muse or other to show up. Considering the number of muses that must be roaming around out there at this point, I have a hard time thinking that there aren't plenty to go around. Or people hopping from one project to the next because new inspiration has struck. Maybe it's little muses on writers' shoulders whispering in their ears like angels and demons. No wonder no one can stick to anything.

I get it. I do. Writing is hard. Really hard. Not all writing, of course. Some of it's really easy, but that's not generally the kind of writing you can make a living doing. Writing a novel, though, is hard. People don't appreciate how hard it is to write a book, because most people can write. Not a book, but, you know, they can write. They do teach it in school, after all. It's like running. Pretty much everyone can run if they have to. Most people don't like running (like me), so they never do it. Some people feel it's necessary, so they jog or whatever to keep healthy. Some people have to be able to run as part of a job whether they like the running aspect or not. Some people enjoy running, though (the fools!), and they run for fun going out at the butt crack of dawn when all reasonable people are warm in bed. Some people, though, enjoy it so much they make it more than just a hobby. They do things like run marathons. And writing a book is like running a marathon.

The real issue with writing is that most of the people I see through their blogs want to run a marathon, but they're still busy treating their writing like a morning jog. In other words, they like doing it, but, you know, it's too cold, today, so I'm going to stay in. Or I'm just feeling a bit lazy, today, so I'm going to sit and have some more coffee. Or they go on their jog, but they never really push themselves. They run just enough to feel good and pat themselves on the back, but they never really make the effort to go farther or faster. Staying in one's comfort zone is, after all, comfortable.

Like I said, I get it. I started my first book back during my college days. I was actually on hiatus from school and working as a glorified babysitter called a substitute teacher. I did a lot of reading that year, but, also, I started writing a book. It was about a dragon. I still think it's a good story, and I may have it buried somewhere, but, really, I didn't get very far into it. Basically, as soon as I started getting winded, I said that's enough. I let it sit around and sit around and never got back to it. That was almost 20 years ago. It was a nice morning jog that didn't go anywhere.

I've had several of those over the years. Heck, I have (or had) notebooks full of stuff back in high school and college. Unfortunately, more than a small amount of that is poetry, but we're just gonna move on past that. [Really, one of these days, I'll get around to talking about poetry.] The problem was that I wanted to head out on a morning jog and have it end up a marathon. Somehow, I'd get into the zone and just run and run and, at some point, realize I'd done the whole 26 miles. And writers do this, too. They sit down at their keyboard and start writing and hope (for lack of a better term) that inspiration will strike and they will be filled to bursting with words and before they know it, there's a whole, perfect book in front of them.

It just doesn't work that way. Not unless you're Coleridge and taking illegal substances, and you can see how well that turned out for him.

What it really comes down to is that if you want to be a writer, you have to treat it like it's your job. The biggest thing about a job is that you have to do it no matter how you feel. Well, you do if you want to get paid. I don't know of any jobs that continue to pay you if you only show up to work when you feel inspired to do so. If you know of any, please let me know what they are! At any rate, if you want to be a writer, you have to show up to work. Period.

It's about being proactive. Don't wait for inspiration to come to you; go and get it. If you work at it, you'll discover that you have inspired moments, and the more you work at it, the more often those will occur. When you just sit around waiting for them to come... well, that's kind of like waiting to be struck by lightning. Yes, it happens, but, really, do you actually know anyone that's been struck by lightning? It is possible, though, to make the lightning come to you, but that's where the effort comes in.

Unfortunately, I can't tell you how to do it. I can tell you what did it for me (actually, I did that, already, way back in this post), but you have to figure out your own trick about how to get serious. Set aside specific time for it. Set word count goals. Whatever it is, you have to do it. See, the real key is that it has to come from inside. And that's the main difference from waiting for lightning and catching lightning. One is external and one is internal. You can't do it until you internalize it. Like going on a diet.

Because going on a "diet" is external. You expect the "diet" to work some kind of magic on you and change you without you really having to do anything. Diets only work when the person puts in the effort, and, then, the particular diet doesn't matter. Any diet will do; they're just different plans to get you to the same place, but you have to follow the plan.

I love the old movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. [No, I do not love the book nor do I love the newer version of the film.] Wouldn't it be great to be Charlie and have all your dreams come true through no effort of your own. Just have some benevolent being look down, see your worth, and grant all your wishes. That's what waiting for inspiration to strike is like. Liek Charlie waiting to find the Golden Ticket; although, even Charlie had to go to the effort to buy the candy bar, and it seems like even that's a bit too much effort for some people these days. But wouldn't that story have been so much more interesting if, instead of waiting for a golden ticket, Charlie had taken matters into his own hands and sneaked into the factory himself? If he had done something to make it happen.

Not to steal a slogan from a popular athletic line, but you really have to just do it. You have to make the decision. You have to put in the effort. You have to get to work. Make it your job. Even if that means making it your second job. Or your third. If you want it, you have to do it. Because, in the end, in the wise words of a particular little green guy:

"Do or do not. There is no try."

Who Started Your Dream?

Before I get into this dream business, Shannon Lawrence over at The Warrior Muse has gone and interviewed me. My completely unbiased opinion (>smirk<) is that it's a great interview, and you should all go read it. Actually, I do think it's a good interview, and it has some good thoughts in it. You'll get to find out a little bit more about my book, and there's some of my thoughts about publishing and the publishing industry that I may not have said on here, yet. So go check it out. Just click the little linky up there.

Seriously. Go. Now. I'll still be here when you get back.

As part of Rachael Harrie's platform building campaign, Cat Gerlach started up this little blog ring about what inspired us to be writers.

The idea is that if you follow the chain of links, you will eventually get back around to the person you originally clicked from. So pick one of these: Rachele Alpine or Ali Cross (although, I think Ali's post won't actually go up until tomorrow (the 16th), if I followed that conversation correctly) and click through. If you continue on through the links that is the other one that you haven't already read, you should get all the way back around to me. Sounds like fun, right? And don't worry: it's only a dozen or so of us, so it's not going to take you weeks to get through them all.
Oh! and there are prizes. However, I'm not going to list all of those out, because, honestly, I'm not sure what the list boiled down to. I will tell you how to win one, though: leave a comment. Each comment you leave on each blog is worth one entry, so there's your incentive to make the full round. I do think there were some good prizes in there, even if one of them is not a copy of my book (sorry, I just don't have any available, yet, but I'll explain about that next week).
Anyway...

Who started my dream?

I think my answer is somewhat atypical, at least from what I have seen from other people talking about these kinds of things. I never got "inspired" to write because of some book or some author I read. The closest I come to that is, probably, The Hardy Boys, but I wouldn't really call it a moment of inspiration. I started reading The Hardy Boys sometime around 4th grade. At some point in there, I decided I was going to write one of my own. Except that I changed the names to protect the innocent. Mainly myself. Because I didn't want to get in trouble for copyright infringement, although I have no idea why I would even have been thinking that at that age. But I was.

I got out a notebook, and I started writing. Probably Big Chief (Big Chief was really pads of paper. Colored red (not  the paper, just the covers). Because it was an "Indian" thing. No, no one thought anything about that back in the 70s), because that's what I always had back then. I don't really remember, though. I was making decent progress. But this was back in the days before I knew I could tell my mom to stay out of my stuff, and she had this annoying habit of getting into my things, so she found my "book" and read it. Her very supportive comment was, "Did you make up all these names yourself?" The book went in the trash. Especially since I hated the names. I felt that they were inadequate, and that was the thing she commented about. I didn't continue my writing pursuits.

But I was good at it. Teachers commented about my writing all the time, sometimes reading things I had written to the class. But I didn't think about writing anymore. I was a math/science student, after all; artistic pursuits were good for nothing more than hobbies.

By the time I was exiting high school, I hated math and science. Well, mostly math. I was so tired of it. I elected to major in English in college. I did this with the idea of writing. No, I can't tell you why. What I can tell you is that I had to argue with every counselor at the school about my choice. Yes, my math/science scores were that high. Not that my English scores were bad; they weren't. In fact, they were great, so that should say something about my math scores. I spent my entire freshman year at college explaining to the administration that, no, really, the English major wasn't mistake. Yes, I knew what my scores said. No, I did not want to major in math or anything related to it.

The English department was ecstatic with my decision, and I was, eventually, appointed a counselor from the English department.

My first real attempt at a novel was during a break from college while I was substitute teaching. It's about a dragon. I still have it stored somewhere in a box, and I still think it's a good story. I might one day go back to it. I can point to no inspirational moment for that novel, either. It was really more about saving the environment. With a dragon.

What I'm saying here, I guess, is that the decision to "be a writer" came more out of not wanting to do math anymore and knowing that I was good at writing. So, yeah, sorry for the big let down there. I didn't even follow through with it at the time. I was young and busy, and staying home at night to write never occurred to me. Then, I was out of college and working and still out at night and staying at home and writing never occurred to me. Then, I was moving to CA and getting married and, later, dealing with kids, and the whole writing thing had, mostly, just left my brain.

So how, then, did I end up writing a book? Well, here's the thing: A few years ago, I kept hearing about these Anita Blake novels and how good they are. Let me preface this by saying that I hate, hate, the whole vampire thing. I hated it in high school when everything was about Anne Rice, and I still hate it, today. Vampires are the bad guys. Period. End of story. I liked Buffy the Vampire Slayer for that very reason (I'll excuse Angel, because he was an exception); the vampires were bad. Evil. So, hey, here are these Anita Blake novels, and she's a vampire slayer, so I thought I would try one out.

Big mistake. And apologies to anyone that likes that trash, but it was trash. I started with the first one, because, you know, that's what you do, and it was torture. I'm not very good at putting down a book once I've started it, but I seriously considered it with that one. One thing stopped me. See, by about page 80, I had figured out the entire plot. Really. The entire plot to a 350 page novel in 80 pages including who the bad guy was. But I kept thinking that I must be wrong, because, really, no published author could be that bad. And I kept hoping that I was wrong and that Ms Hamilton had tricked me all the while knowing she hadn't.

The other thing I kept thinking was that I could do better. So much better. The thought that went along with it was that that thought was stupid if I then didn't actually follow through with doing better. It's like guys across America yelling at football players on TV. In other words, ridiculous. Anyone can say "I could do better," but it doesn't mean a thing unless you actually do that.

From that perspective, I suppose you could say that Laurell K. Hamilton was my inspiration, because it was because of her and Anita Blake that I decided to follow through with the thought of writing. I'd talked with my wife about it on-and-off for years, but that was all I did. Talk about it. I hadn't made a serious attempt since that discarded book about the dragon while I was in college. So I wrote a book. And it's better than Anita Blake.

At least, it's better than the first one. I was told, later, that the Anita Blake books don't really get good until you get to the third one, but, seriously, how does anyone get that far? After having all of my fears about the first one confirmed, there was never even the consideration of going on, so how did anyone ever get to #3 to begin with. Maybe I'm being too harsh? I mean, she is a big, famous author with a big, famous franchise from a big, giant publisher, so what do I know?

Oh, but wait, I do have to mention C. S. Lewis and Narnia. He's probably the writer that had the most influence on The House On the Corner. It was a very deliberate thing on my part to write about houses and the things you find there. It was deliberate because Lewis and Narnia had such an impact on me as a kid. I wanted to find places, doorways, other worlds. And I wasn't the only one. My friends and I used to play games wrapped around those ideas, and I wanted to capture that feeling in my own book. There's even a small nod to Narnia in House. How could I resist?