anime luv – d.grayman

If so, Write or Die! is your kind of writing tool. This online application will provide a Consequence of your choice, from Gentle to Electric Shock. You can also set a Forgiving, Strict, or Evil Grace Period before the Consequence takes place.

If you attempt to escape by saying you prefer not to be online while you write, you are out of luck. There is a desktop version of Write or Die! available for $10 – a very economical stick indeed. It uses the Adobe AIR framework, which means it will run on Windows, Mac, and Linux, so you truly have no excuse.

Unless you resort to pen and paper.

In which case I expect you to turn out as much work as Neil Gaiman, since he uses that venue as well.

Bassanio: Thy paleness moves me more than eloquence; And here choose I; joy be the consequence!
- Merchant of Venice

growing

On November 9, 2009, I wrote a short book review of The War of Art. I think it is an amazing book and wanted to share it with people.

On November 11, 2009, I was contacted by Callie R. Oettinger, of Oettinger & Associates, Mr. Pressfield’s PR agency. She let me know about Steven’s “Writing Wednesdays“, blog posts similar in vein to The War of Art chapters, and that Steven was available for a short, 3-question Q&A of themes covered in WOA. In the world of online author promotion, this was brilliant.

Unfortunately, I was sucked into the end-of-year holidays and did not get back with Callie until January 7, 2010. I honestly didn’t think I would receive a reply, but it was worth a shot.

Mr. Pressfield answered my questions on January 11, 2010. And here they are:

ME:WOA was publish in 2002. Given the books you’ve written since then, and your adventures in blogging, are there any updates you’d want to make to WOA? Any additions or deletions?

SP: If I ever thought I was over-stressing the power and insidiousness of Resistance in WOA, I’d go back and stress it even more the next time. I have learned, for sure, that that devil never goes away, never slackens and, if anything, shows itself in even more subtle and devious ways than I noted before. Right now, for instance, I am locked in a monumental battle with this alligator and it’s not at all clear which one of us is gonna come out on top. Resistance has manifested itself (for me) in areas of projection onto other people, including the ones closest to me (perhaps them most of all)–and I’ve even projected it onto myself, in the sense of self-disempowerment. I have learned that I’m not superman and just because I “wrote the book,” that doesn’t mean Resistance can’t and won’t kick my ass. It’s a bitch!

ME: I really enjoyed your chapters on defining oneself hierarchically or territorially. Given the abundance of interactions online (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, forums, etc.), do you think it’s more difficult for a creative to stay territorial.

SP: I have a theory that, if you want to come up with a sure-fire profitable business, invent one that thrives on human weakness. Like the credit card industry, which banks of us being late in our payments and overextending ourselves in expenses. Facebook and Twitter can be very positive media, used the right way, but, alas, they are mass incubators of distraction, shallowness, short attention spans and Resistance. We can blow a morning like that, tweeting around. It’s ridiculous. On the other hand, we can look at these social networking boondoggles as challenges to be overcome–like Twinkies and Oreo cheesecake. “Get thee behind me, Satan!”

ME: You’ve been very generous and answered a lot of “3 Questions” for a lot of people. Is there a question you want to answer that you haven’t been asked yet?

SP: Wow, that’s a great one, Heidi. There’s one that I don’t have the answer to, one that I’d like to hear somebody really smart answer for me. “What is nature’s purpose for Resistance?”

In other words, why put something so negative on us all? It’s like nipples on men. Why? Seth Godin calls it “the lizard brain,” and I think there’s something to that. I have an explanation in WOA that it’s the Little Ego trying to protect itself and keep us from operation out of our Deeper Selves. Maybe it’s simply entropy. The thought I’ve been entertaining lately is that it springs from the evolutionary/tribal impulse NOT to change. Just as being able to change and grow serves a survival purpose in evolution, so also must (one would think) the hereditary tendency to keep things just as they are. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Maybe some ancient tribes who had learned how to hunt mastodons survived better by sticking with what worked, while other more innovative hunting bands perished.

Still none of those answers satisfy me. If you’ve got a flash, Heidi, lemme know!

I would like to thank Mr. Pressfield for taking the time to answer my questions and for Callie for contacting me in the first place. Freelancery also has a post of Steven Pressfield’s Q&A with a list of additional blogs that have posted his Q&A’s as well.

Major Kira: if you’re not fighting them, you’re helping them.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, “The Darkness and the Light”, 5.11

making it work

This year I’m trying a “no excuse” approach to some of my resolutions.

As you saw in my January 7th post, I’ve been 0% successful on my resolution to get up an hour earlier every day. I have been 75% successful on my resolution to exercise every day. The difference? My time management resolution was a traditional goal while my exercise resolution was made under the “no excuse” rule.

There is no excuse not to [insert resolution here].

The important part of that sentence is the “resolution”.

My exercise resolution is to do 25 sit-ups, 20 leg-lifts for each leg, and 25 jumping jacks. It takes me a total of 5 minutes.

There is no excuse not to exercise for 5 minutes every day.

That is the key to creating a “no excuse” resolution – resolve to do something small, something that fits into your existing routine, something you have no excuse not to do on a daily basis.

And while it’s not going to get me in shape to run a marathon, five minutes of exercise a day is more than I used to do, and something I know I can and will do every day, for the rest of this year. This is a resolution I will keep.

So what’s your writing no-excuse resolution? Writing for half an hour a day? Reading one chapter of a book on writing? Producing one page in manuscript format?

Daisy Adair: I died in 1938, for exercise we drank sloe gin and smoked Lucky Strikes.
- Dead Like Me, “Ghost Story”, 2.3

anniversary

But I still have a day job, so my external alarm clock goes off much earlier than my internal clock would prefer.

As a New Year resolution, I said I would get up an hour earlier than usual and use the time to write WritShel posts or edit, then go to work. These are easily stoppable writing tasks, compared to really getting into a story and then being late for work (not that I’ve ever done that before ^_^; ).

As of today, January 7th, I have been 0% successful at this resolution.

I have written, it’s just been from the hours of 8 pm to 1 am.

I am a Night Owl.

I could force myself to get up early, but I know I’d still end up being awake and at the keyboard near and sometimes past midnight. It’s just how my internal clock is set up, and it’s much easier to follow it than fight it.

Because sleep deprivation doesn’t do me, or my stories, any good at all.

Michael Westen: In battle not even the best laid plans can survive contact with the enemy. If you want to survive, you have to be willing to improvise.
- Burn Notice, “The Hunter”, 3.6

cruisin’

With all of the ‘top 10′ lists re-capping last year news and entertainment, it seems few people take time to make their own list of what they accomplished last year. The end of the year is a rush toward midnight so that everyone can start fresh, a blank slate, no regrets.

While you may have wanted to do more than you got around to last year, you probably did some pretty cool things. Take the time to think about what those were, then congratulate yourself.

Instead of being dejected over not finishing your novel, celebrate the fact you started one. Most people don’t even get that far.

Instead of feeling bad over having not written more, be happy that you wrote as much as you did. I bet it’s more than a lot of people you know.

Celebrate your successes and and know you can do that much, and more, this year.

King Julien: It is time to celebrate me and the many moods of me. Today, festive me.
- The Penguins of Madagascar

camo – i haz it

I write out six things I want to accomplish the next day.

Sometimes it is something specific, like email Kyle about the DFW Writers Workshop Conference fliers. Sometimes the goal is more general, like research horse-drawn carriages. Whatever it is, it is written down before I go to bed, and left on the kitchen counter so I can review my list while I have breakfast the next morning.

As I go through my day and accomplish each goal, I drawn a line through it on the list.

When I first started out, I didn’t always clear the list, so anything left over at the end of the day got moved into a slot for the next day. I’ve been using this system for about a month now, and am clearing my list more often than before. It’s usually the weekends when things slip to the next day, but I make it a point to do everything on the list on Sunday so I can start the week with a clean sheet of paper.

If you also want to try this out, you can download a copy of the 6 Daily Goals worksheet (PDF, 18k) I created to keep track my own goals. It’s two pages which cover Monday-Sunday, so if you print the PDF double-sided, you’ve got one piece of paper to keep track of each week.

Here are a few things I’ve learned

1. Try to put the first thing you want to accomplish as #1, but be open to getting the other things done if the opportunity presents itself
2. When you are working on a goal, focus all of your attention on it – it’ll get done a lot faster
3. If a goal gets moved more than twice, take a moment and think about why you keep putting it off and do something about that or take the item off your list – it’s just taking away an opportunity for you to get something done

This is just one of many time management \ productivity systems out there. I’ve tried several, and some I still use. This is one that has made it past the one month mark, so signs are it’s a keeper. By the end of the week, I have a list of 38-42 things I have accomplished. I may have done them anyway, without using the 6 Daily Goals Worksheet, but this way, I can see it writing. And that feels pretty good.

Barney Stinson: Good. That way I can cross two things off my list.
- How I Met Your Mother, “Something Borrowed”, 2.21

• I was sick
• I did not have any back-up entries
• I did not put forth the effort to sit down a write a post

Excuses

• I was sick
• I couldn’t think well enough to write something worthwhile
• It was easier to watch TV or sleep than write a post

Consequences

• There was no post last Thursday
• I felt guilty
• No one hurt me

silver fingers

There are several similarities between the reasons and the excuses. Ultimately it came down to me not doing something. The consequences were not life-shattering – this is a bog about writing, not NASA, I get that.

I also get that this is an entirely self-motivated effort at this point. Whether or not a post appears every Tuesday and Thursday is up to me. It is also up to me how well I plan for unexpected occurrences, such as having draft entries that can be posted with minimal effort and intellectual focus.

So what if you miss a deadline? Who does it affect? What are the reasons, excuses, and consequences?

And what can you do differently so it won’t happen again?

Moriarty: A deadline has a wonderful way of concentrating the mind.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Ship in a Bottle”, 6.12

“The unpublished have no deadlines.”

This means if you do not have a writing contract, nobody cares if you write or not. You have to care. You have to want to tell that story more than you want to do anything else, because if you are doing something else, you are not writing.

Thinking about your story only counts if it results in words on the page.

Researching your story only counts if it results in words on the page.

Telling someone about your story rarely counts because you’ve just told the story, so you probably aren’t going to put words on the page.

balance

In order to find the time to write, you need to know how you spend your 24 hours in the first place. Just as you (hopefully) keep track of where your money goes, decide now, for just a few days, to keep track of where your time goes. Grab a journal or a notepad or a set of sticky notes and when you do something, write down what it is and what time it is. When you do something else, write down what it is and what time it is. Soon you’ll have a log of where your day went.

And the funny thing is, when you have to write it down, sometimes you don’t want to do it. You are now aware of how much time is going to what activities, be it on Twitter or watching TV. Suddenly, because you are now accountable for that time, maybe you want to spend it doing something else, like writing. You could also be pleasantly surprised to find 15 minutes here or 30 minutes there, which is more than enough time to jot down some character traits or write out a few lines of dialog.

Some people may flee in horror at the thought of keeping track of what they do all day the same way they can’t be stifled with a monthly budget. Your time record doesn’t have to be to the minute, it’s just a tool to help you find the holes, the minutes or hours that you don’t realize could be spent doing what you really want to do … assuming you really want to write.

If you want to make good use of your time, you’ve got to know what’s most important and then give it all you’ve got.
- Lee Iacocca