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Jay Posey

Quitting What You Start

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The new year is always a great time for new beginnings and fresh starts and promises and resolutions and no-seriously-I’m-really-going-to-finish-that-novel-this-years.

But sometimes what we really need is to quit some things.  And I don’t mean the quit-smoking, quit-drinking, quit-spending-so-much-time-on-the-internet-looking-at-My-Little-Pony-Fan-Art type quitting.  I mean actual, real, honest-to-goodness giving up on things that might be good but just aren’t best.

There’s virtue in persevering, in fighting the good fight and seeing something through to the end, in the ever-present “finish what you start”.  But it’s not a blanket rule to apply to all things.

It’s okay to quit watching that movie you don’t like. It’s okay to stop reading that book that isn’t giving you any meaningful insight, thought, or experience. It’s okay to stop volunteering for all the bake sales where no one buys your not-quite-chewy-not-quite-crunchy “Cajun-style” blackened chocolate chip cookies. It’s okay not to finish that short story or screenplay or novel that seemed so promising right up until you actually started writing it.

If you’ve never finished anything before, it’s worth it to power through and learn what it takes to go from beginning to end.  But if you know you’ve got it in you to Finish, it can be instructive to ask yourself whether or not something is actually worth finishing.

Finishing is critical.  But becoming a Skillful Quitter just might be the thing that clears out all the nonsense so you can focus on the Really Important Work.

The Worst Rejection Letter

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If you are in the hunt to do the Professional Writing thing, you will get rejection letters.  Or at least emails.

But more than likely the worst rejection letter you ever get won’t come from a publisher.  And it probably won’t be a letter. (Or an email.)

It will come from someone whose support you’re counting on, someone who  you expect to be on your side, someone you hope will be your biggest cheerleader.  Someone who with just one little encouraging word could make you believe that you really do have something beautiful or meaningful or honest and good to share with the world.

And that someone will tell you you’re making a terrible mistake, that you’re really not that special, that they’re so disappointed in you, that you should know better, that you shouldn’t get your hopes up because you probably won’t make it … you know, all the worst of what you’ve already been telling yourself.

The good news is, it doesn’t just happen to writers.  It happens to everyone everywhere who tries to make a Big Change.  It’s what happens when you decide to take a chance to do something different and risky and new and unexpected.  It’s what happens when you’re courageous.

The better news is, no matter where it comes from, there’s not a single rejection letter out there that can actually prevent you from accomplishing what you set out to do.  Only you can do that.

Don’t do that.  Be courageous.

Quantity vs. Quality

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Sometimes More is Better.  More Money, for example, or More Bacon.

But usually More is just lazy.  Because, let’s be honest (which I always am anyway, honestly, so there was really no need to say that), it’s easier to add More than it is to identify what’s really wrong and possibly, horror upon horrors, take something out that’s already there.

At worst, sometimes More is an excuse.  “Sure, it could be better, but look at HOW MUCH OF IT THERE IS!!!”  That 18-pound block of spicy cheese, for example.

The problem with More is it tends to dilute.  It muddies.  It distracts us from the thing we were trying so hard to accomplish or to communicate in the first place.

Great design is often more about subtracting than adding.  More about removing the things that just don’t quite fit, that don’t move us the direction we need to go, that don’t support or enhance the experience we’re trying to create.

Unfortunately, More is often our default measure of Value.  This book is 26 pages, and that one is 692.  Clearly the first isn’t worth $9.99.  This game takes 30 minutes to complete, and that one over 100 hours.  This salad fits in a bowl, and there’s a whole buffet over there.

But More is rarely an indication of anything other than volume.

So how long should that book be?  Long enough to tell the story, and no more.

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 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.