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Jay Posey

Archives for November 2012

Flu Shots vs. the Flu

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Sometimes you do everything you’re supposed to be doing.  You wash your hands regularly, you don’t stay up too late, you eat right, and of course, above all things, YOU GET YOUR FLU SHOT.

And sometimes, you get the flu anyway.  Not a mild headache or some feverish feelings.  Full on, honest-to-goodness, shaky-hands, drippy nose, thousands-of-blankets-make-me-shiver-and-this-sheet-makes-me-sweaty, WHY-DID-WE-BUY-ALL-OF-THESE-60000-WATT-BULBS-FOR-OUR-LAMPS flu.

When that happens, the very best thing is to admit you’ve got the flu, and to go to bed and get plenty of fluids and eat your soup, and see the doctor if you didn’t already.

What you shouldn’t do is try to go about life as if EVERYTHING IS FINE JUST AS PLANNED THANK YOU, coughing all over your loved ones and leaving a slug-like trail of leavings and tissues behind you.

It happens with writing too.  Sometimes you spend all the time crafting that piece, and researching, and specifically targeting not just a market but even a very specific outlet, and you follow all their guidelines and you hear positive things from everyone who sees it, and then you get your letter and it starts out with something like “Dear Talented Writer, We regret to inform you …”

When that happens, it’s worth going to bed and getting plenty of fluids and eating your soup until you recover, and then getting back up and carrying on knowing you did everything you could and that something well beyond your control went awry.  It doesn’t help to pretend that that particular magazine or publisher or website had it out for you, and it doesn’t help to second-guess all the correct things you did.

On the other hand, if you are staying up late and eating only beef jerky and chocolate-covered bacon chips and drinking only gin and forcibly applying your Chapstick to the lips of random passers-by and NOT GETTING YOUR FLU SHOT, don’t spend your hours in bed holding a grudge against the world or your would-be publisher.

(In other news, I really hope this is just a cold.)

 

Ideas vs. Solutions

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There’s no such thing as a bad idea.

WRONG.

Actually, lots of ideas are bad.  Using that trampoline to jump over that electrified fence topped with razor wire, for example.

Actually, that might be a great idea if this side of the fence is full of rabid rottweilers or hungry zombies.

(But not both, because empirical evidence clearly shows that the rottweilers would take care of the zombies, and you could just watch the excitement while you bounced, carefree and giggly, on your maximum security prison yard trampoline (because where else would you have an electrified fence with razor wire on top), at least until you did that weird mistimed double bounce thing and tweaked your knee and fell off the trampoline where you’d be easy prey for the shambling rottweiler zombie dogs, but really you’d have no one to blame but yourself for getting into that situation in the first place.)

An idea without context is impossible to evaluate.

One of the Great Overlaps in Writing and Game Design is the fact that in each, you can’t know if something is a “good idea” or not unless you know what it is you’re trying to accomplish first.

Solutions on the other hand have purpose.  They exist to solve a problem.  They are in fact created with a goal in mind.  They can be measured and tested for effectiveness, efficiency, cost, value, risk, reward, and any other number of handy things.

Like game development, it’s entirely too easy to over-complicate a story.

I have a cool idea!  Now I just have to find a place to wedge it in this story I’m currently writing!  And if it doesn’t fit, I’ll add some other stuff to it until it does! And after a while I’ll have added so much stuff that my story will be incoherent and rambling much like this blargh!

In either case, one of the toughest parts of the job is throwing away good ideas that aren’t actual solutions.

Your Pain Is Not Unique

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The thing about pain and suffering is that it always feels especially tailored just for you.  Like no one else in the world could possibly understand what it was like to go through That Thing.  That trauma.  That loss.  That depression.

The truth is, of course, that we’ve all got wounds, scars, and secret shames.  This doesn’t make our pain any less real or significant.  But it’s all too easy to cling defensively to our hurts as if they in some way define us or make us unique. And while I’m sure I’m the ONLY one who had that thing happen in elementary school with the chocolate milk and the underwear, the honest fact is there are a lot of people out there who can relate on some level.

When we use our art to be mad at the world, and use our pain as a crutch or an excuse, or a reason to demand everyone make special accommodations for us, we risk alienating the very people we have the most power to reach.

But when we accept it, overcome it, push through it, and use it as a springboard to bring honesty to our work, something magical happens; the pain we thought was so personal, so specific, unique only to ourselves, suddenly connects to others who recognize something of themselves in what we’ve been through.  In what we’ve survived, and in the best cases, conquered.  Our deepest wound healed can be the greatest hope for one freshly wounded.

All hurts can be redeemed, if we have the courage to believe it.

 

Sand Castles and Cathedrals

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Sand castles can be simple mounds, or amazingly intricate sculptures.  But regardless of their complexity, part of the joy in creating them (and some of their inherent beauty) comes from the fact that someone put time and effort into something so temporary.  They’re an extravagance, created with the knowledge that in a day or two, or even in just a few hours, they will be utterly destroyed.  Not just ruined, mind you.  Erased.  As if they never existed.  For a sand castle’s brief life, their only impact is on the people who built them and who viewed them, and even that impact is temporary.

Cathedrals, on the other hand, are a generational undertaking.  Those who start them will be long gone before they are completed.  And they endure as a monument and a legacy.  They leave a lasting impression on those that encounter them, and most often those that laid the foundations never know how far-reaching their impact was.  Cathedrals too are an extravagance, not because they are temporary, but precisely because they so far outlast those that participated in their construction.

When we’re At Work Doing Our Art, most of our time is spent building sand castles.  They might be incredibly meaningful and well-crafted sand castles, with our hearts and souls poured into every corner, wall, moat, and turret.  And if we enjoy building them, they’re worth doing well.  They’ll bring joy to an audience, and they can teach us important lessons about architecture and aesthetics.  But they are still sand castles, meant to be washed away. To be erased.

As we master our crafts, we might one day create a cathedral.  We might one day finally possess the skill, the maturity, and the courage to construct a life’s work, worth passing on to future generations.  Something that might endure for 500 years.  Something truly worth devoting our whole selves to.

It’s easy to believe our work is a cathedral.  We let others convince us that the thing they’re paying us to do is worth every sacrifice we’ll make to complete it.  Sometimes we’ll even convince ourselves it’s true.  

But treating a sand castle like a cathedral will destroy you.

Never confuse which one you’re building.

 

Happy News! (For me, I mean!)

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So I can officially announce that I’ve officially signed a two-book agreement with official Angry Robot, officially-speaking!  There is a press release about it and everything!

You can see it on the interwebs here:

http://angryrobotbooks.com/2012/11/angry-robot-acquires-two-books-in-jay-poseys-duskwalker-cycle-series/

Weeeeeeee!

I will, of course, be updating more about it as things get figured out (like book covers!), but currently the plan is to have the first book available Autumn of 2013.  I am sure that you will ALL BUY ALL THE COPIES.

Your Voice, Their Language

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There are a couple of big Milestone Moments you should celebrate when you’re on the road to becoming a Professional Doer of Words.

The first is a really big deal, no matter what your particular mode of writing expression happens to be (whether it’s advertising copy, or greeting cards, or graphic novels, or whatever): it’s when you find your voice. 

After you’ve been writing for a while, there will come a time when it all just clicks, and you’ll suddenly find that you’re writing in a way that is uniquely your own.  A way that feels comfortable and natural.  A way that your readers will come to recognize.

When that happens, it’s worth taking a moment to appreciate and celebrate it.  Yay you!

But there’s another milestone that frequently gets overlooked.  In fact, in many cases it isn’t even recognized as a goal worthy of being achieved.  It’s when you’re able to adapt your voice to speak your audience’s language.

Think about your favorite joke.  You know, the one everybody loves about the guy with the moose and the shotgun.  If you don’t know that one, it’s okay because I totally just made it up.  You might tell that joke one way when you’re sitting around with your best pals from college, and quite a different way to your professional colleagues at the country club.  Same joke, but tailored to suit the sensibilities of the current crowd.  (As a side note, NEVER TELL THE MOOSE AND SHOTGUN JOKE AT A COUNTRY CLUB.  I did that once.  Once.)

Flexibility in your writing is a great thing to strive for.  If you’re a Professional Doer of Words, you’ll most likely find yourself getting paid at some point to write something targeted at a different audience than the one you’re used to.  It might be a change of medium – when you’re asked to write a movie treatment for your novel, for example.  It might be a change of genre, when you decide to go from writing high fantasy to a modern military thriller.  Or it might be when you’re using your ninja-like word skills to make some extra cash writing copy for a website.

In those cases, no one’s asking you to sell out your artistic integrity or to be something you’re not.  But they do want to be able to understand what you say.

Your voice, their language.