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Jay Posey

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.

Writer’s Block and Me

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As a professional writer, I’m often asked by other writerly types how I deal with writer’s block.  And until recently, I’ve had a pretty stock response: if you want to be a professional writer, you learn how to write anyway.

And to some degree that’s true.  Writing Professionally has a lot to do with Writing No Matter What.  Digging deep and getting words on the page, even when you have a cold (sometimes), or wish you were working on That Other Project (usually), or want to take a nap (always).

But for some reason, the last time I was asked that question (by a lovely young woman at George Mason University, hi, I’m sorry I didn’t answer this better in person), it struck me that, while true, it wasn’t particularly helpful.  So I spent some time on my drive back home reflecting on Writer’s Block, and discovered that I actually have three methods of attacking it, which I will share with you, for a mere $79.90:

1)  Know what you’re doing

Generally if I’m having trouble writing a scene, whether it’s for a game, a short story, a screenplay, whatever … it’s because I don’t know what I’m trying to accomplish with the scene itself.  The good news is, this isn’t a creative issue, it’s a logistical one.  I just have to go back and look at what the story needs to move it forward.

Am I answering a particular question I raised earlier?  Am I raising a new question?  Am I creating a conflict between two characters, or resolving one?  Once I’ve identified the purpose of the scene, it’s much easier to put the building blocks in place to accomplish that purpose.

2)  Write Badly

If I know what I’m supposed to be doing, but I’m still feeling blocked, I probably just need to give myself permission to write badly.  In these cases, I’m usually sitting there waiting for the perfect line or two to present itself to me, and then freaking out about how it’s not happening and oh no I’m not a real writer I’m a fraud and everyone’s going to find out and no one will ever pay me to write again ever.

Turns out, the best thing in these cases is for me to write badly on purpose.  To write things like “This is the scene where John gets angry.  ‘I’m so angry!’ he said angrily.  And then he punches Bob with an angry fist.”  Because once I’ve written something silly that I know I don’t intend to keep, it often helps me get over myself.

(And the Big Secret Trick about that is: as long as I’m badly writing things that need to happen to move the scene forward, when I go back, I don’t have to do writing anymore, I just have to EDIT which, mathematically speaking, is like eleventy-billion times easier.)

3)  Read

If neither of the previous two steps help, then I might just be out of words.  So I need to fill back up.  Which I do by reading.  It sounds silly of course, but I’m a firm believer that reading and writing are intimately connected.  Typically, I’ll find something totally unrelated to whatever it is that I’m working on.  Anything, really, as long as it’s engaging.  Sometimes I’ll read articles about space exploration, or what DARPA’s working on.  Sometimes I’ll pick up a classic, like Don Quixote.  Sometimes I’ll grab something newish, like Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey.  As long as it’s engaging, it usually has a refreshing affect upon my brain-mush.

Typically, one to three of those three things is enough to jar me back into production.  I might not feel inspired, but I’ll at least be back in the game, doing what I’m supposed to be doing, which is words.

Please make checks payable to Jay Posey.

Pencils and Chisels

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Writers, if your pencil was a chisel, people would have more respect for your work.

No one meets a sculptor and says, “A sculptor?  Cool!  I have a great idea for a sculpture; it’s a life-size Trojan horse, made of marble.  I would make it, if I just had more time.”

But as writers, we hear this all the time; people have all sorts of Great Ideas for the next big movie or novel, and amazingly the ONLY thing stopping them is how busy they are.  Not a lack of experience, not the fact that they’ve never studied plot or character development, not that they can’t even craft an email that clearly and concisely communicates a message.  Just a lack of time.

Because the basic mechanics of writing are within most everyone’s grasp, it’s easy to believe that anyone can do it.  Because technically, anyone can.  Most of us can type, or put pen to paper, or dictate.  But confusing having a grasp of the mechanics with being an expert is like thinking because we can walk, we’re ready to run a marathon.

Fortunately you don’t have to be respected to be a good writer.

Good News, and Bad News

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The good news is, you’re special.  There is no one else in the world that thinks exactly the way you think, that has the exact same experiences that you have, that expresses herself the way you do.  You have a unique perspective and a unique voice, and as you refine your skills as a writer (or painter, or architect, or marketer), you’ll find that you connect with a certain group of people in a certain way that no one else can match.

The bad news is, you aren’t special.  You’re not so smart and so talented that you’re going to whip up your first novel and sell it to the first publisher that reads it for seven figures.  You’re not going to bang out a screenplay this weekend and have a check from Paramount by next weekend.  You’re going to have to work and suffer and strain.  You’re going to be disappointed.  You’re going to have to persevere. To overcome.  If you do those things, you will eventually prevail.  Even if it takes you a decade.  Or more.

And then the rest of us will get to appreciate how special you are.