In Praise of Plan A

Let's begin with a re-cap of my blog post Death to Plan B.

What Plan B says: I got your back, bro. Go for it.
What Plan B means: You're going to fail, loser. Come move back home. You can live in the basement.

Plan B is not necessarily evil. When it is doing its job, that is, supplying a fulfilling and/or lucrative source of income while also providing time and encouragement to pursue your own creative projects, it's lovely. But when Plan B hisses in your ear to stop writing, painting, or researching ancient Nordic magical encantations because your ideas aren't worthy of the time you're giving them, and instead use your energy to give your already robust Plan B even more attention, then we have a problem. In general, the stronger the Plan B, the weaker the Plan A.

Why is this?

Let's take a look at your typical Plan A:
• silly
• impractical
• appeals only to people like you
• does not provide an obvious and/or immediate income-generating path
• makes you giggly, happy, and giddy
• little precedent for it
• none of your friends have done it
• none of your friends want to do it
• your friends have tried it and failed
• books are written on how many millions have failed at it
• looks strange on your resume
• parents are not able to describe it
• creates hopes of fame and grandiosity followed by waves of shame and self-loathing for allowing you to think expansive, wonderful things about yourself
• requires you attend expensive classes, workshops, conferences, and seminars
• tempts you to travel to places you've never been with money you don't have
• demands that you network with people you've never met

Look at your typical Plan B:
• has worked in the past
• capitalizes on your experience
• exists within an established market
• success is measurable
• affirmation arrives regularly, in the form of compliments, gratitude, and cash
• your parents can mostly explain it to their friends

Who wouldn't want Plan B?

Plan A is that great idea you have, like a post-apocalyptic clothing line, or a diaper composter, or glasses that change their prescription as your eyes change, or shoes that let you bounce like Tigger, or Asian/Dragon themed underwear for women (go ahead and steal these ideas, Plan B has already talked me out of them). Fun, exciting stuff that makes people go: "Cool! Too bad it's totally impossible for people like us."

I'm writing a novel. I've been writing it for eight years. The first chapter won an award. A NYC literary agency read the entire manuscript and said it's not finished. It has some traction out there in the world. I have been three months from finishing the novel for the last two years, writing anywhere from 0 minutes a day (sometimes for months at a time) to 6 hours a day (three times total). Things like work and kids and howling doubt get in my way.

During those eight years I have worked at graphic design almost every day. Kids and howling doubt and writing don't get in the way of work. I work hard, sometimes at night, sometimes on weekends. My design has improved immensely in the past eight years because of the energy I've put into it. I never used to refer to myself as an illustrator, except to say oh yeah I'm pretty good in this one cartoon-y style, but then I drew one cartoon-y thing, then another, and now I've fully illustrated two educational card games (coming to stores near you this spring)!

Here are two cards from one of the games.

Are they not the cutest things you've seen in your life? Thanks! I'm an illustrator! We get better at something the more we do it. We become what we do. If we only put the same effort into our day jobs that we put into our personal creative projects, we probably would have been fired. And if we work to please our creative muse as hard as we work to please our colleagues, our projects won't be shoved into corners of time no one else wants (née 11:42pm). We have to nurture those babies and create time and energy and resources for them. Which is why I'm here to tell you: my novel will be complete in three months. Now, I must go write.

Death to Plan B

The single greatest impediment to the success of Plan A is to have a really solid Plan B. 

Plan A by nature is more true, daring, and risky. It comes from the heart, from the gut, from unexpected successes, flashes of insight, moments of pure confidence. But for Plan A to become more than a bubbling in the belly and  real in the world, it must first push through the bullet-proof scrim of Plan B.

Plan B, ever practical and durable, is an extremely good liar. It tells you that you you don't need to give up security to achieve a dream; you can have your cake and eat it, too. That is true, if you like your cake crumbly and dry with no frosting or non-pareils.

Plan B crosses its legs and you looks straight in the eye: if you have a dream like writing, or singing, or performing—can't you work on that at night after your kids have gone to sleep? There's a good two hours of time right there. Imagine what you could accomplish with your exhausted, end-of-the-day brain if you used your night hours. It's your dream, so stop whining that your creativity is more ripe, bursting, and explosive first thing in the morning. That's a cop out, Plan B tells you, plucking a cat hair off its black turtleneck. 

Devote some time to your dream, Plan B continues, of course, but don't forget to put the lion's share of your energy toward that which enervates you. Work hard to stay exactly where you've already been. Cultivate the same solid, secure, goals and sources of approval you achieved ten years ago. Be safe, be assured, put food on the table and money away for taxes. Route the sewer. Replace the roof. You're reaching the age where you also probably need to up your life insurance.

Plan B's on a roll, now. It's a shame you can't take advantage of lower interest rates with your house being too far underwater to refinance and all. Too bad you're working harder to make less money now that half your industry has been outsourced to India. Just become indispensable. Become un-outsourcable. You know what you should do—you should learn Javascript. You'd be really good at coding because you are creative and logical. Who says art has to be limited to writing a novel? Live the creative life and let go of what creativity looks like. If you open your mind, you could be happy and have a good job. A web development firm with three weeks' vacation, a dart board, and free Intelligentsia coffee.

Plan B nestles in your ear, wallowing in its waxy cushion. Books are becoming extinct anyway, at least that's what it read on Yahoo! If you still insist on hitching your harness to the relic of publishing, at least write your novel while your kids are napping. What, your kids don't nap? Give them a twig and twine and tell them to go entertain themselves. That's what we did when we were kids. We spent hours building forts out of old newspapers and used Dixie cups. That's why we're so superior now, and why we give such great advice.

NEXT: A little more about Plan A.

Good Reading!

I just read the first 18 pages of William Goldman's "Marathon Man" and—wow— have not been so blown away by anyone's writing since "The Shipping News." I'm practically holding my breath reading, the sentences are so long, the action moves so quickly, and it is so dark and tense and funny at the same time.

"'There is definitely a lump on your wife's left breast,' the doctor had begun, and Rosenbaum, apoplectic at the man's stupidity, had turned to his pale spouse, saying, 'See how lucky we are to have come to a genius specialist? We tell him there is a lump on your left breast and, armed with only that speck of information, he can absolutely assure us that the lump is a lump.' He turned to the doctor now, a young cocker, probably married to a blonde shiksa. 'Of course there's a lump on her breast, my God, you're a tit man, I didn't come to ask her about the lump on her face—that's called a nose, by the way, I don't know if they teach that kind of thing anymore in medical school.'"

Gotta get back to the book now.

In Defense of Emoticons

An interesting Behance article on email etiquette has two interesting takeaways for me.

First, a neutrally worded email is perceived as negative. You have to go out of your way to show positivity. I have been using exclamation marks lately, despite having been brought up with a literary education that regards exclamation marks as the devil.

Second, the article espouses emoticons "until keyboards can actually perceive the emotional content of our messages." I often want to use emoticons, but have been too scared/snobbish, but today I learn it is the way of now.

I suppose this is the time of my post to end with exclamation marks and smileys, but I shall not.

Please, No

It's funny to notice whilst researching prospective agents/publishing opportunities the specific subjects they are not seeking. I particularly like the ones that add "please," like they are at their wits' end.

• Please do not send stories about cats that live outdoors. 
• No stories about September 11th, the Y2K bug, or tsunamis.
• No stories about "good" children always making the "right" decision.
• No stories about dishwashing, divorce, or drivers' ed.
• No stories about vaginas or penises afflicted with bizarre allergies please.
• NO STORIES ABOUT BATMANS ORIGIN.
• NO STORIES about how "I loved my dad and I'm sad he's dead."
• Please...no stories about your grandmother's tomato sauce.
• No stories about Abe Lincoln please.
• The magazine does not care to read any more stories written from the point of view of a fetus. 
• No stories about grandma's funeral.
• No stories about vampires or werewolves either.

And it's amazing they still have to say this:

• We do not accept manuscripts that are handwritten.
• We do not accept articles that do not deliver on the article title.
• We do not accept queries by telephone.
• We do not accept articles from article generator software.

Ode to Timelines

This entry I hope will help first timers like me wrest control of their novels-in-progress.

6 people (angels) agreed to review the first draft of my novel-in-progress. A chunk of the feedback had to do with the marking and passing of time, which was all too often, as I'd written it, a.) not possible b.) not likely or c.) unclear. The marked-up manuscript below illustrates:


My characters were using technology that didn't exist, talking about wars that had been fought 10 years earlier, and aging at different rates than the roman calendar. One reviewer gently suggested I create timelines of my novel on macro and micro levels: even sometimes, depending on the pace of the action, hour by hour. Here is the first one, the timeline of my character's sweet 19 year life. The timeline is six feet long:


She's in school throughout most of the story, so I had to know how old she was in each grade, and had been computing this (inaccurately) in my head. When l I created the timeline, I remembered how old you are in a certain grade depends on what month you are born. Almost always, you are two different ages per grade level. Additionally, because school starts in September, if you are born between September and December, you are older than most of your peers and if you are born June to August, you are younger than most of your peers.

For other time elements to work best, my character needed to be born in the spring, so I made her an Aries because astrologically that sign most suited her temperament. Here is a close-up of the timeline, with her birthday (April 2) and the start of school (September 7) marked for each year, and major events penciled in. Her age is in blue, her grade is in teal and the year is highlighted in yellow. It's not in any way pretty, but it works. The events are penciled because they can still move around:


Life gets pretty busy for my character between 2005 and 2007, so I made a timeline of just those two years:


Just putting in the events in the spring of 2006 makes the timeline smooshy, so I made another timeline of just those months. It's hard to see here, but I have the actual dates and days of the week marked in so no longer will the same action occur on both a Friday AND a Saturday:

There is much more timelining to do, but an unexpected payoff already is the timelines have not only helped organize the action, but the emotional arc of the story as well. For example, I kind of knew a lot happened to my character in a 2-day period; I wrote it that way after all, but when I saw all the events on a timeline, my thought was: this poor kid, she has to be freaking out! Now I have a choice: I can ratchet up her emotional state (also suggested by a reviewer) or parse the events out over a longer time span.

Such is the power of organization.

Secret of Blogging Success

Neatorama posted an article on secrets to their success. You can read Neatorama's article here.

The takeaways:
1. Write original articles. (check)
2. Write Regularly. (check)

Neatorama is ranked 35th on a Top 100 Most Popular Blogs Written In All Languages list out of Sweden and I know Swedes have impeccable blogging taste because my friend Alex lives there. I've been to 26 of the sites listed so that makes me one quarter on my way to international blogger hipdom.

Kill Your Critic

I shouldn't complain, but I will. I read a lot of books on the craft of writing and burn through a couple a week sometimes, mostly because I don't always read the entire book. Most writing books, poetically, are terrible. Not in a grammatical or structural way, but boring, uninspiring, pedantic.

The worst books have a piece of recurring advice that grates on me. The gist of the advice is: if you write a passage or scene that you think is particularly fine, that you are super proud of, that you think is amazing—delete it.

The proponents of delete-your-good-writing rely heavily on the quote, alternately attributed to William Faulkner and Mark Twain, "Kill your darlings."

The premise of this argument seems to be: you are so self unaware/narcissistic/tone deaf that if you think it is good, it must be bad, so cut it out. If a carpenter is super proud of a staircase she built, should she rip it out? Why would anyone who is such a poor judge of writing be a writer in the first place?

There are times I write something I think makes me look really smart and I don't want to delete because I want to impress, but deep in my heart I know it's a pathetic crock of crap. Yes, that should be cut and I would wholeheartedly back the advice: "Kill your pretentious crap." Honestly assessing your writing is different than not trusting your instincts.

Today's rant is over.

What's Another Word For Screech?

I've been riding the El lately, due to an on-site gig I have in River North where parking is imposible unless you want to pay $18 to park in a lot. Plus which, the commute is a good time to work on my novel, as things have been super hectic at home since Child #2. Plus plus which, my protagonist takes the El for the first time and waiting for the Purple Line provides the opportunity to take in the sights, sounds and smells of the El with which to write this scene poetically. But all I hear are the standard sounds of public transportationage: whoosh of doors, screech of brakes, rumble of train going down track. So pedestrian. So banal. There is no poetry in public transportation, I grumble. I also happen to be reading The Bonfire of the Vanities on the train and came across Tom Wolfe's description of the subway:

"Every time a train entered or left the station there was an agonized squeal of metal, as if some huge steel skeleton were being pried apart by a lever of incomprehensible power."

Gulp.

Think bigger, I tell myself. The next time I find myself waiting for the Purple Line I listen, and still all I hear is whoosh, screech, rumble — plus I picture a huge steel skeleton being pried apart by a lever of incomprehensible power.

My protagonist also experiences a great amount of fear and another place I get stumped is describing the physical effects of fear without resorting to the usual my hair stood on end, etc. Again, Tom Wolfe:

"The blood drained from Fallow's face, and then his chest and arms. His hide turned cold. Then a million little scalding hot minnows tried to escape from his arteries and reach the surface."

So the first thing I'm going to do, I'm going to stop reading Tom Wolfe.

Random-ish Thought

Has anyone else noticed Anthony Trollope’s short story “Malachi’s Cove” (1864) and David Guterson’s novel Snow Falling on Cedars (1995) is the same story?

Check it out:
1. both are set in a coastal area
2. plots are centered around a water-related death and/or injury
3. a character is wrongfully accused of causing that death and/or injury
4. the false accusations are steeped in prejudice
5. the wrongly accused character is vindicated at end of story (yay!)

The Miracle of Low Expectations

I like to pass on the secrets to good life when I have them. Sea salt was the first. The second secret is: set low expectations for yourself. There is surely value in thinking big & shooting for the stars & going for gold, but thinking meekly produces its own sorts of miracles.

For example.

Writing books tell you write 1 hour a day, or three pages a day, or 1,000 words a day or whatever it is that works for the author. One hour doesn't work so well for me what with two children and a job and a bunch of meetings each week. The books say if you have kids and jobs and meetings,  get up an hour earlier. Ha, ha! That's hilarious! The people who suggest this don't have little kids and jobs and meetings themselves, for the most part; usually they use J.K. Rowling as their example of someone who actually pulled this off.

Try 10 minutes of writing a day.

Using the At Least 10 Minutes A Day system, I completed a 300-page memoir in 18 months. Not that the manuscript found a publisher (though two excerpts have been published  this year, one in Word Riot and one in Hip Mama). I'm 120 pages into a novel, started last November. If I made myself write an hour, I'd never get a word on paper. Anyone can write for 10 minutes.

At Least 10 Minutes A Day can be applied to exercise, meditation, home projects, work goals, anything. It works.

Hip Mama

I'm thrilled to announce my story "Over A Barrel" has been accepted for publication in the Summer 2008 issue of Hip Mama. It's the story of an ongoing battle with my in-laws over eating at Cracker Barrel.

CAWS Newsletter #1

NOTE FROM THE FOUNDER
Welcome to the Chicago Area Wildlife Society, an egalitarian society made up of people doing nothing in particular. Membership in the society is free. There are no dues, there is no board of directors, we hold no meetings, elections or tribunals. We kick no one out; we let no one in. You are a member if you say you are. You need not qualify yourself, though ownership of Society apparel confers a certain amount of legitimacy to membership claims. Otherwise, we do not care whether you love or hate wildlife or if even you are urban. Some of our members communicate with animals (see accompanying article), others chase them with sticks. We do not judge.

We like t-shirts and we like them soft and we like them cotton. We like our cottony softness made in the US by adults. Therefore we choose American Apparel garments whenever possible.

FEATURE ARTICLE
Conversations with Squirrel Whisperers
People who speak to squirrels and rodents tend to be reclusive, but in this rare interview, society members Randy and Jane (real name withheld) share their secrets.
_ _ _ _ _
Q: Randy, I want to ask you a few questions about talking to squirrels.
Randy: You don’t talk to squirrels, you communicate with them.
Q: Butofcourse. And how does one communicate with squirrels?
Randy: Squirrels make two sounds: one like a cockatiel or a parakeet squawking and one that’s a clicking. I might click at a squirrel and if the squirrel clicks back like it’s chuckling, it’s happy. I never use the
squawk noise; that’s a fighting sound. That would be like barking at a dog.
Q: Can you make the happy sound for us?
Randy: Tsk tsk.
Q: Jane, what sound do you make to communicate with squirrels?
Jane: I don’t actually communicate with animals like Randy does. I just noticed that when I make a certain sound, they’ll come over to me.
Q: What sound is that?
Jane: Ffff ffff (high-pitched noise).
Q: What happens when you make that sound?
Jane: It gets their attention. I think it sounds like the cry of their young. One day I did it in a pet store and all the rodents in the store came out of their burrowing places and banged against their glass cages.
Q: Such power could corrupt.
Jane: Yes! I think the noise might mean something bad because it freaks them out.
Q: Randy, how did you start communicating with squirrels?
Randy: I watched them on the lawn of the state capitol (of Wisconsin) and noticed that they do a lot of communicating by twitching their tails, posturing and barking. I started to move my arm to imitate
their tail movements and imitating their sounds and I found I could communicate with them for hours. They’ll continue engaging as long you keep them at ease.
Q:Any advice for aspiring squirrel whisperers?
Jane: Just don’t use my real name for this interview.
Q: OK, but that’s not technically advice.
Jane: I think you should get that from Randy since he actually communicates with squirrels.
Q: Randy?
Randy: Don’t make a squirrel a promise you can’t keep. They’re sensitive beasts.
Jane: I completely agree.