Six years ago today I started this blog. Many novels, movies, TV shows, and video games have been written and produced during that time. For my own part I have helped guide professional projects to market at the expense of some of my personal projects. Among those casualties; A novel, graphic novel, and screenplay.

The primary reason I stopped updating this blog was in respect to those project casualties. It didn’t seem sensible or fair to keep writing blog posts while my other writing projects languished in some dark musty basement of DNF sunk cost and procrastination.

With the game on store shelves, I am no longer haunted by the looming spectre of an unshipped giant, or feel the deceptive pull of that particular sunk cost. It is with some humor and humility I turn to a different kind of sunk cost; The sunk cost of my long abandoned writing projects, including this blog.

There were times when my interest in the craft and mechanics of writing as expressed through this blog were the sole spark to keep my writing projects alive, and as such I believe my self banishment from blogging may have been a mistake. Rather than competing for my other writing projects, this blog served in support and cathartic cooperation to the principles I was practicing in my craft. Any competition was merely for my time, and it was my own fault for not setting aside more of it.

Self-flagellation aside, it’s time to turn to the future; Writing projects, one of which is this blog.

The future begins with the right here and now.

As any reader here knows, I’m fond of structure. For me, most of the creative process, its burps and hiccups, revolve around structure and the role it plays in shaping the overall work. Story DNA was probably my first post focusing on this apsect, and little did I know there would be many more to come.

As I strafed the topic of my fiction, I discussed dystopias, and battled it out between fantasy vs. sci-fi. 2005 was my first time for NaNoWriMo. I had a hunch about geneplore long before my 2006 discovery of the geneplore model.

Of course who could forget my debates with Melly over art vs. entertainment.

Another 2006 revelation was 7 Secrets of Writing Scene by Scene. That was a huge one for me, as the blindly-draft-hundreds-of-pages method has never been anything but failure for me.

I have fond memories of the folks over at Writer Unboxed getting a kick out of my writing on the wall. I still have the shower crayons, and yes still use them.

2007 brought some finality to my evaluation of writing methods & techniques, along with good habits to help you see the light at the end of the tunnel. It should go without saying that great software always helps.

Thanks for coming along with me on this crazy adventure, and may we have many more!

A few thoughts:

• The Godfather game for 360 is super violent, and lots of fun. Inventive use of original voice recording from the movies, in addition to some re-recording done with the original cast.
• The Bourne Ultimatum was awesome. Thematically felt a lot closer to the first movie. I wasn’t a huge fan of the second movie. The third ties up a lot of stuff from all the movies, but mainly, there’s not a dull moment in it. Every scene in Ultimatum has a purpose, and almost every scene has high tension. What the third movie does most of all though, is make the trilogy feel very cohesive — like a single story.

More later…

We all need time away from our work and our lives. Without it, we will never gain any new perspectives. Distance from life and work mentally detaches you from it, lets your mind focus on and enjoy other things, and when you return to your life and work you will see opportunities that you did not see before.

To think if you hadn’t taken the break, you’d not have seen those opportunities to do and experience more in the same old life you were living before, or on the same story.

I have to admit that I did sneak in the tiniest bit of work on my story while I was away. I have a scene that takes place in Vietnam. My father is a Vietnam veteran, so I grilled him on details that pertain to my scene. I discovered that while the basic thrust of my scene is okay, most of the details are wrong. I will have to correct and rework these details so as to be accurate. The benefit is that the scene will be more authentic and interesting.

The break also brought about a few realizations, namely, that perfect is the enemy of good. I have to admit that I am a perfectionist, and this holds me back in many ways. I have a hard time letting things go. Part of taking a vacation is letting go of the pattern of your everyday life. It is a forced break from perfectionism, and I find it is a great way to deal with the problem.

Upon return, you may find that you are a big fish in a small pond. There are opportunities all around to make life more enjoyable, but more often than not we’re simply too close to everything to realize it.

Take a vacation!

P.S. Best of MN vacation photos here.

Most of my thoughts on turning thirty surround a post John Scalzi made which was an update to an older post, one of the primary thrusts of which was young people need to know their writing sucks.

From my personal experience, I have to agree. I’m a pretty late bloomer as a writer. For me Scalzi’s advice comes as good news. I wrote a few short stories in high school, and always enjoyed the idea of being a writer but never gave the notion any serious thought until a few years ago. I’m a little bit glad I didn’t waste my time. I honestly don’t think I had very much that was meaningful or entertaining to say when I was younger. I was too busy head butting reality and being a dumb hippie.

What I didn’t realize until I read the Scalzi piece is that I wasn’t fit to do much writing when I was younger for a wide variety of reasons, but the main one being lack of perspective. I used to be very naive. Even though I was an angsty, rebellious, cynical teenager, looking back I was still every bit as naive in contrast to my adult understanding of the world.

For example, one of the things I didn’t grasp when I was younger was the idea that people can perform good deeds with sneaky or even ulterior motives. Celebrities can donate or perform charity events because their publicists and agents tell them it would be good for their image. Maybe even your favorite rock star does this.

Politicians hire people to make movies for them on an impassioned topic like global warming, even though the power bill for their mansion might be, oh, $13,000 a month. No, not everything everyone does is out of the goodness of their hearts, even when it’s a good cause. Even ‘good people’ may have motives and hidden agendas which would shock or frighten you. And almost everyone is a hypocrite.

I used to think that the ‘evil people’ in the world were the people who only ever did ‘evil things,’ which is in stark contrast to my world view at age thirty where I fully understand that many ‘evil people’ do a great number of ‘good things’ simply to appear good. The reverse is equally opposite, with good-natured people (often teenagers) behaving badly to appear popular or tough in the eyes of their peers.

I guess you could say it’s taken me a good thirty years to fully grasp the idea that perception matters more than truth or reality, and that many people manipulate this fact to cover their tracks or artificially construct a halo above their head. It’s called buying your way into heaven, and it sometimes happens with the people you’d least expect.

It has also taken me thirty years to bake the concept that being right and being smart are also two different things entirely. When I was younger, as is often the case among young people, being right was more important to me than being smart. It was preferable in my youth to beat people over the head with my beliefs, thoughts, and feelings, even if that meant I would alienate them or cause them not to like me. I was “being honest.” And in my youth, I felt that honesty was an unquestionable virtue.

How does all this affect writing? Well it should be obvious from these examples how certain depths of character can be conveyed by having characters who urge others to do as they say, not as they do. I feel at age thirty I have a better understanding on tactical reasons for being two-faced and why anyone would want to manipulate perception of themselves — for both “good” or “evil.”

Which brings me to my final point. When I was say, eighteen, I don’t think my definition of good and evil was very deep. It was your basic indoctrinated version, stealing is bad, killing is bad, lying is bad. Except, I wasn’t quite enlightened to the idea that some of these things make for great dilemmas a hero might face.

It is not only interesting to throw characters into situations where they are forced to behave badly — in the craft of good fiction, it is necessary. All good conflict, and character dilemmas stem from a deeper, more relative understanding on the issues surrounding morality.

And unfortunately for many people including me, a deeper, more world-wise understanding of relative morals has only come through experience.