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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.

Committing vs. Adapting

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I have a tendency to treat momentary adaptations like intentional decisions.

Imagine you’re on a morning commute, stuck sitting in a line of traffic, and you decide to get off at the next exit to take a longer, alternate route.  And just as you’re going up the hill and around the curve of the exit, you get a better look, and realize the traffic jam ends about 1/4 mile past where you’re exiting. Probably in this case, you do the smart thing, and get right back on the highway and continue on your way.

Fact is, I don’t always do the smart thing.  SHOCKING REVELATION, I know.

Under other circumstances, once I’d gotten off at that exit, I very well might have just continued on my longer alternate route, instead of doing the Jerk-Who-Uses-Exits-as-Shortcuts maneuver.  Silly, I know. Why would I do that?

Because sometimes when I make a decision, I forget to re-evaluate it when new information appears. I get hard-headed and think “I’ve already made my decision, and I’ll see it through because I’m not a quitter!”  I’m committed.

This is one reason it’s so important to set clear goals for ourselves.  High-level goals give us a way to measure our choices and behaviors, helping us stay on track and short-circuiting unproductive uses of mental energy.  In the above scenario, my goal is to get to work as soon as possible.  I choose the longer, alternate route when it seems like that’s going to help me achieve my goal.  But new information appears, and suddenly my momentary adaptation is no longer necessary.  Or, to say it another way, I need to adapt my adaptation.

Whether writing a novel or improving your max bench press, reaching a goal is rarely, if ever, a straight-line process.  More often it’s a very squiggly line.  (Sometimes there are loops involved.  And messy scribblings.  And sad face doodles.)  But if you’re working towards a goal, that squiggly line is likely getting less and less squiggly over time.

To borrow a military example, guided missiles typically don’t fly straight to target in pin-point laser fashion.  They constantly make adjustments to their trajectory, right up until the moment of impact.

Commit to your goals. Adapt your methods.

And adapt them again, as necessary.

Fans, Tag-Alongs, and True Believers

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Fans are great.  At least, that’s what I’ve heard.  If you’re in the creative business (or you know, delivering a service, or a product, or pretty much doing anything at all that gets people to notice you), you’ve likely got a crowd of people who like you.  It’s tempting to think of them all as fans.  But it may be useful to peel back the proverbial onion skin a bit and take a peek below the surface.  Mmm, proverbial onions.

As has been clearly documented above, fans are great.  They’re the ones who pay your bills, who eagerly await your next release, who market you for free, and who defend you whenever someone says you’re an overrated hack.  But they’re also the ones who are most likely to feel betrayed if your next work strays too far from what they expected of you, who will call you a sell-out when you hit it big(ger) than they’re comfortable with, and who will say your old stuff was better.  They’re also the most likely to offer you advice on what you should do next, or how you could improve.

Tag-alongs, on the other hand, are fans of fans. They’ll buy your stuff and tell everyone how much they like you, as long as their friends are doing it.  They’re mostly just going with the flow, so the influence you have over them is limited.  They’ll be largely indifferent to the discussions your fans are having unless there’s a particularly passionate argument, in which case they tend to amplify the loudest voices in the room.

True Believers are the rarest of your entourage, and are your most ardent supporters through it all.  They’ll buy everything you put in front of them, even if it’s the same thing you gave them last month wrapped in a newer, shinier package.  They’ll go toe-to-toe with the angriest detractors even when they’re outnumbered 1000 to 1.  And even when you’ve totally blown it, they’ll reassure everyone (even you; especially you) that the thing you did that you are ashamed of was actually brilliant and one of the best things you’ve ever come up with.

It’s easy to think that True Believers > Fans > Tag-alongs, but I don’t think you can really rank your audience.  Every person who supports you deserves to be appreciated, regardless of their motivation.  It’s just important to be able to identify who it is you’re talking to.

And it’s even more important to know who you’re listening to.