American Dream

As I wait for my brain stew to bubble up into broth, I've found my mind returning to the original basis for my venture: why would I choose to pursue a lifelong dream?

Dreams may be appealing, but most people find their pursuit to be unrealistic. For a while, even the cultural idea of dream pursuit was re-appropriated: the term "American Dream" became synonymous with marriage, 2.4 kids, a dog, a house, and a yard with a white picket fence.

But there is a much more general, long-lasting, and pervasive dream ideal in America: the idea that you can be anything you want to be. All that is required, sayeth common wisdom, is hard work, dedication, believing in yourself, and never giving up. Indeed, far pre-dating the picket fences, America was known as "the land of opportunity."

Unfortunately, this idyllic picture of what existence and opportunities for individuals can be like stumbles on many of reality's barriers. While we would like hard work and dedication to translate into success, and it can, it is not a guaranteed result. Much of traditional success is dependent upon networking. (I am not usually one to decry nepotism, because I view it as understandably lower comfort with the unfamiliar.) I have long understood that making art is one thing, but getting "discovered" for your art is another.

Despite the realities that face dream-chasers, there is nevertheless typically a desire to pursue an ideal life-goal. Shortly after I made over my own list of long-term goals, I happened across this poem by Langston Hughes:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

I placed this poem right below my list of goals so that I would remember not to defer my dream.

As for the specific dream of writing, itself, my best friend and co-author was also influential. He sent me this:

It was an encounter with a magician that changed my life forever and made me a writer.

During the Labor Day week of 1932 a favorite uncle of mine died; his funeral was held on the Labor Day Saturday. If he hadn't died that week, my life might not have changed because, returning from his funeral at noon on that Saturday, I saw carnival tent down by Lake Michigan. I knew that down there, by the lake, in his special tent, was a magician named Mr. Electrico.

Mr. Electrico was a fantastic creator of marvels. He sat in his electric chair every night and was electrocuted in front of all the people, young and old, of Waukegan, Illinois. When the electricity surged through his body he raised a sword and knighted all the kids sitting in the front row below his platform. I had been to see Mr. Electrico the night before. When he reached me, he pointed his sword at my head and touched my brow. The electricity rushed down the sword, inside my skull, made my hair stand up and sparks fly out of my ears. He then shouted at me, "Live forever!"

I thought that was a wonderful idea, but how did you do it?

The next day, being driven home by my father, fresh from the funeral, I looked down at those carnival tents and thought to myself, "The answer is there. He said 'Live forever,' and I must go find out how to do that." I told my father to stop the car. He didn't want to, but I insisted. He stopped the car and let me out, furious with me for not returning home to partake in the wake being held for my uncle. With the car gone, and my father in a rage, I ran down the hill. What was I doing? I was running away from death, running toward life.

When I reached the carnival grounds, by God, sitting there, almost as if he were waiting for me, was Mr. Electrico. I grew, suddenly, very shy. I couldn't possibly ask, How do you live forever? But luckily I had a magic trick in my pocket. I pulled it out, held it toward Mr. Electrico and asked him if he'd show me how to do the trick. He showed me how and then looked into my face and said, "Would you like to see some of those peculiar people in that tent over there?" I said, "Yes."

He took me over to the sideshow tent and hit it with his cane and shouted, "Clean up your language!" at whoever was inside. Then, he pulled up the tent flap and took me in to meet the Illustrated Man, the Fat Lady, the Skeleton Man, the acrobats, and all the strange people in the sideshows.

He then walked me down by the shore and we sat on a sand dune. He talked about his small philosophies and let me talk about my large ones. At a certain point he finally leaned forward and said, "You know, we've met before."

I replied, "No, sir, I've never met you before."

He said, "Yes, you were my best friend in the great war in France in 1918 and you were wounded and died in my arms at the battle of the Ardennes Forrest. But now, here today, I see his soul shining out of your eyes. Here you are, with a new face, a new name, but the soul shining from your face is the soul of my dear dead friend. Welcome back to the world."

Why did he say that? I don't know. Was there something in my eagerness, my passion for life, my being ready for some sort of new activity? I don't know the answer to that. All I know is that he said, "Live forever" and gave me a future and in doing so, gave me a past many years before, when his friend died in France.

Leaving the carnival grounds that day I stood by the carousel and watched the horses go round and round to the music of "Beautiful Ohio." Standing there, the tears poured down my face, for I felt that something strange and wonderful had happened to me because of my encounter with Mr. Electrico.

I went home and the next day traveled to Arizona with my folks. When we arrived there a few days later I began to write, full-time. I have written every single day of my life since that day 69 years ago.

I have long since lost track of Mr. Electrico, but I wish that he existed somewhere in the world so that I could run to him, embrace him, and thank him for changing my life and helping me become a writer.

- Ray Bradbury, December 2001

Madeleine L'Engle's book, "Herself," a gift from my mother, also emphasizes writing every day. I know that this is particularly important for writers, but I suspect it matters no matter which dream a person selects to try to make real.

Should I Work On My Weakest Area?

The main reason I am only a co-author is that I use my best friend to compensate for my weakest area, the conceptual side of storytelling. I'm a good writer, but I'm not a fantastic storyteller.

I suffer from blank-slate syndrome: when I sit down to write something without a detailed plan, I find myself at a loss. Plot hooks, on the other hand, I can do. If I know what the plot's going to be, I can draft it up no problem.

In contrast, my friend is a visionary and a storyteller. He invents interesting characters and makes their personalities bounce off of one another, he uses vivid images and re-visits themes. In other words, he makes all the pieces fit together.

That is a skill that I have never demonstrated to myself that I have. Even in collegiate studies, when I was faced with writing a story, I resorted to looking at science fiction artwork created by an artist friend and writing stories based on the setting they depicted. The stories I wrote, moreover, I did not consider that their pieces fit well together, regardless of the skill with which I made them.

In the discussion that led up to the early termination of my last solo project (the one with IP difficulties), my co-author suggested, as he has many times, that I strike out on my own. This time, though, he specifically suggested that instead of compensating for my weakness, I should develop it in the hopes of making it not-weak.

This is a difficult question without a clear-cut answer: should I work on my weakest area? There are two basic approaches to this question. 1) Because it is my weakest area, my time is better spent doing what I am naturally good at. This is the approach I have favored. The other approach is this: 2) Skills at which you are weak should be developed. This is a costly approach, but the idea is that, afterward, the weakness will be gone.

This over-simplified description is leaving out non-measurables such as the individual's capacity to learn the weak skill, the start-up cost (money/time) of the learning, and the availibility of compensation aids. The superior answer seems very situational. I don't know what's better for me in my situation, but at this point I feel that my hand has been forced, and my next step must be to select a project and begin work.

Are Dreams Supposed to be "Fun"?

For my co-author, writing his books is his hobby. He wants it to be fun. If it were not fun, then it wouldn't be a very good hobby, and he would find something else to do.

And yet, I was baffled when he asked me, last night, whether or not I was having fun. Yes, I told him: but fun isn't enough.

At the most basic level, why do some people choose (as I have) to at least attempt to live out their dreams? Why is a dream desirable? By definition, the things that people dream of doing are what they believe they will most enjoy, they are most passionate about, and most desire to do.

The standard alternative is to find something to do that you don't hate but that is "just work." This creates a personal dichotomy: your work is not really who you are (usually), but it is a thing that takes up a lot of your time.

Pursuing a dream, by contrast, arranges your time so that it is in maximal accord with who you are.

All pursuits require work. If I washed windows for pay - which I don't want to do - it would be work. I'm trying to write books, which is exactly what I want to do, but it's still work. The difference is that, for me, writing books is fun.

But is fun enough? When my spouse asks me about my work, she doesn't ask: "Did you have fun?" Instead, she asks: "Were you productive?"

When you're in the business of attempting to do what you most want to do in life, having fun is a given. By definition, I chose to go this route because it would the most satisfying and the most fun.

Fun, I asserted to my friend, is not a measure of a fulfilled life. People feel fulfilled when they are productive, when they have accomplished something. In my case, I feel productive when I make progress towards finishing a book. Even if I was a construction worker, and I played a only a tiny part in building something, that is still productivity, and it's more fulfilling than the converse (a lack of productivity).

I also asserted that part of this productivity and fulfillment is tied to bringing my work to its natural conclusion. If I make art and stick it in a closet without sharing it, it has not realized its productive potential. I may have added to myself, but I have not participated in the human community. I haven't added to the discussion of values or the morphing universal ball of creativity in the human consciousness. That is the reason for my goal: to make art to share.

You Can't Keep It All

This past evening, my co-author and I discussed his IP decisions and their effects on my long-term plans. As we talked, I re-visited in my mind why I was troubled by having "wasted my time."

Certainly no creative effort is a true waste, is it? Can't it be asserted that each time you create something, you add to yourself?

My grief over having to scrap my plans had to do with my goal. My goal had been to present what I had created to a wide audience, and now, that was off the table. So, from my point of view, his decision was a setback.

The new clarity about my work's IP issues showed me that I had not advanced toward the goal of any publishing/sale/distribution, and that was disappointing. But had I not advanced in any other way?

One reason I particularly disliked this turn of events is that some of the work I've done is unsalvageable. [For clarity: half of the situation I'm in now amounts to misunderstanding / poor communication between my friend and I, and the other half comes from my (poor) choice of source material. The bit of work I've done that is unsalvageable is directly related to the latter half.] As we assessed the situation, I realized that my displeasure revealed immaturity on my part.

Expecting to be able to use everything you make is immature. Fighting to protect ill-conceived work is equally so. If you checked out the link in my first post, then it's easy to see a major difference between me and a practiced author: she is mature enough to know when she's created something atrocious, and she throws it away. I am new at this pursuit, and I haven't learned to let go. The flat-out truth is, you can't keep it all, and you shouldn't want to.

I knew or suspected when I laid my plans and began work that I had made a less-than-ideal choice of source material. One method of preventing this kind of grief might be a "confidence check": if you feel confident about your plans (and you've attempted to head off any problems you can anticipate), it's probably okay to go ahead and start work. If you have doubts about what you've planned, then you're not ready to invest a lot of effort into creating - you need to re-visit the planning stage. Invest up front to save a headache later.

Sometimes, Nothing Goes According to Plan

Last night, I had a dispute by telephone with my best friend / co-author about source material.

Our conversation was, for me, a devastating turning point. I tried to deny it, but he could tell from my tone of voice that he had, in his words,"taken the wind out of my sails."

The implication of his decision, from my point of view, was to invalidate nearly a year's worth of my work, which was upsetting. For the purpose of this posting, it's not necessary to dwell on the details. I consider that a bad decision I made a year ago in the conception of these plans I've been following is largely to blame for the situation I'm in now. Still, I am disappointed with the results of his decision. What I'm faced with now is deciding what to do next.

The reality is quite simply that the plans we make don't always work out. Imagine, for example, the gut-punch of dreaming up a story that you think is brilliant, writing it, and then finding out - after you're already finished - that it's been done before and you can't use it. (That's not what happened in this situation, but that has happened to us before.)

I have two reasonable options right now, as I see it: 1) I could devote a whole lot of extra work to try to save what I've done from being wasted effort, or 2) I could cut my losses, chalk up the "practice" value of the effort that went toward fulfilling my now-scrapped plans, and figure out something else to do instead.

A third, unreasonable option, is to mope and feel sorry for myself, to hard-stop now that my plans have been wrecked, and spiral downward into a very dark and unhappy place. Since this is, in my estimation, a demonstrably unreasonable response to this situation, it is off the table.

Unfortunately, even if I choose reasonable option #1 in a bid to not feel as though my work over the past year was wasted, some of what I've done is still completely unusable. This is partly my fault: my source material was poorly-chosen, and I should have better-appreciated the dangers of using it. Back when I started this venture, I believed that I could turn the story idea into something worthwhile; it turns out that I was wrong.

How did this happen? At the most basic level, it happened because I compensated for my weakest creative area - the process of idea-generating - by collaborating with someone else who is strong in that area. My best friend / co-author is a visionary, and I have long leaned on him for a crutch in that department. In a display of his usual prescience, my friend had long tried to convince me to strike out my own, apart from his influence, because his writing is only a hobby, not a primary pursuit like it is for me. During our conversation last night, he characterized my decision to rely on his idea-generating powers as a mistake, because I had opted to avoid my weakest area rather than strengthening it.

I've often lamented that I draft/work/create too slowly for my taste. My spouse is fond of a Chinese(?) proverb that essentially states: it doesn't matter how slowly you move as long as you don't stop. This is helpful encouragement when I'm feeling sluggish, but it also applies to this specific situation: the wrong thing to do would be to get discouraged and give up or quit. What I'm doing instead is to re-evaluate everything and choose my next course of action.

A final word about art collaboration: I don't want to denigrate collaborating with others or discourage anyone reading this posting from doing so themselves. In the case of our primary project, collaboration serves us very well - my friend summarized by saying that he felt that for every area he is weak in, I am able to compensate with my contributions. That said, collaboration can also be restrictive. The stereotype that comes to mind is that of rock musicians who cease working together "because of artistic differences." Striking out on your own instead of working with others definitely offers more creative freedom.

Organize Your Brain

Even though I find drafting to be a stymieing task, I recognize its enormous importance - the revision process, which far exceeds drafting in clarity, cannot take place at all without the groundwork laid out by drafting.

One of the many ways that I get writer's block when I'm drafting is when I'm not really sure about what I'm trying to do. I'll intuitively stop mid-paragraph when part of my brain has realized that I "just don't know where I'm going with this," and then I'll be stuck. The word-spicket valve closes, and I can't move forward. There's only one way out of this situation for me: I have to think.

To get past this kind of writer's block, I have to get up, get away from my computer, and devote concentration and effort to power my imagination. I'm a particularly visual person and a visual writer. My brain, in the words of an artist friend of mine whose brain works the same way, plays "movies" in my head when I imagine things. (His sister's brain, he says, is different: it thinks in words, like reading a book, which is nothing like my experience.) These "movies" in my head are the only way I'm able to figure out the details of what I'm trying to narrate in my story. When I have this conceptual or imagination-starved writer's block, knowing what I'm trying to narrate is the only way to fix it.

My spouse is training to run a 10K foot race in a few weeks, and I've been joining her on a bicycle. Going out on the roads with her this past week has been good for my process because it forces me into a situation I both can't escape and in which my brain is freed up from writing so that I can finally get some imagination/conceptual work done. In other words, getting out of my apartment gives me a chance to think about what I'm trying to do. The other day I was just chattering to her while she ran about the last writer's block I had and what the problem was, and suddenly it hit me in a eureka-style flash how I could solve my characters' fast-approaching logistical problem.

Prior to that moment, I had been unable to figure out how I could get my protagonists from point A to point B without re-writing everything I'd already done. This was a problem that was impossible to solve when I was at my computer, staring at my text, trying to draft and think at the same time. I devised a solution very quickly when I was able to devote 100% of my concentration to it.

Beyond the brain benefits of getting out of the house, I also recommend exercise to everyone I meet (not just creative recluses!) because of the incredible quality-of-life benefits. Exercise encourages your body not only to regenerate and maintain your physical health, but also to release endorphins, which truly make a difference in how you feel. A sedentary lifestyle will degrade your ability to create, because your quality of mind depends on your quality of body. Paradoxically, expending energy on physical exercise gives you more energy to use (by prompting your body to expand your reserves).

Second Guesses

One huge disadvantage to making art instead of doing something more meaningfully productive, like assembling widgets, is that it the results are incredibly subjective. If you're tasked with putting together a widget, the test of whether or not you succeeded is a known-known - the widget works as intended, or it doesn't. In art, there a lot of evaluative known-unknowns (and maybe even some unknown-unknowns). There are many genres of literature, many reader audiences with many preferences, and many authors with varied skillsets and chosen subject matter. What does the New York Times Bestseller list really mean? The distinction of that honor certainly does not guarantee that I will enjoy reading a particular book, especially not if the book is about something I'm not interested in.

My parents are good critique readers for me: they know me personally, they're honest about their reactions, and they're reliable helpers. But, what if I'm working on something they don't care about? What mainly happens is that they'll still read it, but they won't enjoy it very much.

Because the work I'm doing is so subjective, I rarely feel very confident about what I've done. I've most recently been writing fantasy fiction with heroes and monsters, but my mother doesn't care for it. How do I tell the difference between a critique that is influenced by disinterest in the genre and a critique which transcends that preference? How can I know ahead of time if a fantasy enthusiast audience will treat my artistic and structural choices as acceptable staples of the genre, or if I'm really just bad at making fiction?

Really, I know that some of this wondering is ego-protection to compensate for a lack of skill. I'm aware that I'm not exactly composing great literature here.

But, the subjectivity of making art has helped me unearth a more poignant problem: a tendency to second-guess myself.

This is not a problem that is confined to my craft or my chosen profession. My spouse is forever complaining of doubting herself in her own work, and I suspect that many people encounter this in many areas of life.

My latest project contains examples of how this plays out for me personally: as I attempt to narrate story events, I'm forced to make choices. Do my characters travel and encounter their antagonists on the road? Or, do they stand guard and wait for their enemies? Do I follow the story hook as it was originally conceived, or should I change the plot and allow the heroes to fail?

Text is a strange medium to work in because it is serial: you can only transmit one piece of data to your reader at a time. (This makes things especially difficult if a scene contains a lot of simultaneous motion.) Even as the author writing the text, this linear transmission of data can be problematic. Once I've made a choice, such as to move my characters to the wilderness, I find myself "locked in" to that choice. If I later realize that I hate the choice, it's often too late.

Suddenly, I find myself filled with loathing, anxiety, and uncertainty. What if I made the wrong choice? I feel like I want to throw away what I've done, but I'm yoked to the effort I put in. What if the other choice was better? I begin to dread that I've wasted my time.

This self-doubt and second-guessing can be crippling. For me, it can induce writer's block. Instead of drafting, which gives me the fundamentally-required raw material I need to work with when I go back to polish and revise, I hit a wall, I dead-stop, and I feel stuck. 'I've written myself into a corner!' I think to myself.

It can be important in situations of this kind to realize that the doubt itself may be the actual impediment, not the subject of the doubt. Especially in drafting, but also in other areas of life, halting action in response to doubt is the least-desirable response, rather than the most-productive and satisfying response. (In other situations, obviously, doubt and uncertainty serve as guards against harm or loss resulting from poor courses of action. Measuring the difference between the two takes self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-knowledge.)

Where does this fit in The Divine Comedy?

Throughout my quarter-century -plus of life, I've run repeatedly into the following situation: in the middle of sharing a personal "current event" from my life with a friend or family member, I suddenly can't remember whether or not I've already told them this exact story before.

This is because I typically craft a specific way of telling people about something, and I tell it close to the same way every time. Usually, I fancy myself a writer, and I offload the title of 'storyteller' onto my sometimes co-author and best friend. But even I, word-, syntax-, meaning-obsessed me, does it. I tell stories. I think we all do. It's a major mode of communication for the human race.

(That, by the way, is how I look at this art I'm trying to make: I came to the conclusion that art and literature is one of the methods that cultures use to discuss their values. If I write The Lord of the Rings, I assert that greed is evil and reaps bad consequences. If I write Twilight, then I make excuses for co-dependence. When I'm not writing with my best friend, I'm writing a very basic story that lauds heroism, bravery, love, and all those very typical things. It's been done before, but it needs to be done again, over and over, as reinforcement.)

Some of the people reading this have already heard this next story from me. I can't remember who!

Lately I've been in post-project limbo. It's past two weeks now.

If you have pursued making creative works, you probably know what I'm talking about.

It's that period that occurs right after you finish a project. Right up until that moment, you are stressing out, you are sick of your work, you can't wait until it's over. Then, it's over, and it's like post-partum. You're done, but you're actually still pretty stressed out.

What do artists love more than anything else? FEEDBACK! When you finish a project, you want your feedback now! NOW NOW NOW! You want it as a reward, or catharsis.

But where will this feedback come from? It can't come from yourself... it has to come from everybody else. And everybody else... has a life.

I figured this out pretty fast this last time. Seven people have copies of my latest project, and one person has finished and given me feedback. Believe me, that's nowhere near enough.

But, there is a silver lining in all of this. All of that anxiousness and nervous energy, which you use to check your e-mail every 5 seconds, has to go somewhere.

I've channelled it.

Rather than allow myself to go crazy, I've kept myself busy, so I don't think about the fact that I'd really like some more feedback. I started work again on something new right away. It was pretty "easy" to do that - I was going crazy sitting still!

Getting my next project where I want it to be hasn't been easy, but it never is. Drafting, ugh! The hardest part. Fixing it afterwards is much more clear-cut. Blank canvasses, not so much.

Still, I'm happy that my post-project limbo has been productive. An artist friend of mine told me that, for her, right after finishing a project could be some of the most productive time of all.

It's nice, for once, to fit the mold.