Demanding
This second publishing lap around the track has brought with it a few processes and Live And Learns, not least which is the ever-expanding world of print-on-demand publishing.
I sat with a printer I’ve known for ages, discussing a whole other project not at all involving the Waltzing In Perdition Chronicles. When I discovered his ability to work as closely with me as I prefer in publishing a book, I decided right then and there to migrate everything I’ve been working on elsewhere to working with him locally (great). Which means a hands-on and much more personal way of dealing with things (non-negotiable).
Which is ToddSpeak™ for I Will Have Total Control Or Kill You All Trying.
I’m very excited about the second book in the series because, with it, I’m able to start shaping a more visible (to me) path. A Beautiful Hell was really a book I never intended. That is, every story (save two) was written years prior with no plan whatsoever to one day be published. When it turned into a book, my biggest frustration was that I never wrote anything progressively or with any continuity in mind.
That bothered me then and bothers me still.
But with On Flying Blind I’ve been able to form a direction I intend to consummate in the third book. And that excites me almost as much as getting to work with a local printer.
Excuse me while I go chain myself to the keyboard and finish this sucker…
.
I Sleep With Books
I don’t know what your bedtime routine is but I know mine, and it goes like this: ”Get out of my way, I’ve lost all my good humor. I don’t care if the house is hit by a freight train I’M GOING TO BED.”
And then I go to bed.
And then I read.
It might be for three minutes it might be for three hours, but I’ll read.
I might grab one from this…
Or grab this and stare lovingly into it…
while Cute Redhead stares lovingly at me and says, “…you really are a loser, you know that?” (because I’m staring at the iPhone again, not because I read) :)
.
.
How To Avoid Your Own World War
Adapted from and inspired by The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield
That, my friends, is a clean sheet of paper.
A fresh new start.
Untainted, unstained, and bearing no evidence of anything before the moment you pulled it from the ream.
Here is where you get to write the next chapter. The next step. The next paragraph. The new goal. The sketch. The plan.
Here is where you get to begin threading together the Inside and the Out. That is, your two lives. The life you live, and the unlived life within you. Between them rests that piece of paper, waiting for your action.
Got an illustration inside you? A painting?
What about a book?
Ever wanted to be a teacher? An advocate for those in need?
What about being a dad? Or a mom?
What about the late nights, staring at the ceiling when you allow the vision of the person you might be?
Scare you?
You’re not alone.
It’s hard to pick up the pen—proverbially or as a writer. It’s hard to pick up the brush. It’s very hard…and very frightening…to take action.
And did you know Hitler wanted to be an artist? True story. At the fresh, hopeful age of eighteen he took his inheritance and moved to Vienna in pursuit of the dream. He applied to the Academy of fine Arts and later to the School of Architecture.
Ever see one of his paintings?
Yeah, me neither.
Call me crazy, but it seems to me it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank sheet of sketch paper.
(Now, if you’ll excuse me I have some obstacles to kick to the curb.)
.
.
Reads That Moved
I’ve gotten pretty sick and tired of myself lately, and, believe it or not, that realization is precisely what motivated me to write about reading.
I spend a lot of time on writing, or blogging, or working on one of the books in process. There’s the whole social networking fact of life and business anymore and, truly, I have a very love-hate relationship with all of it. But I don’t think that makes me unique at all.
It’s an easy mistake, on my part that is, to spend too much time here at WiP or any other place with a constant Myself as the topic of conversation. And whether what I write has anything to do with me specifically, it’s Me involved at all that sort of has started getting on my nerves lately. The days lately have been spent strategizing on new books, social media as a tool and not a god, a few other web sites I’m working on and, to be quite frank, making it profitable without losing my own soul in the process. The Grand Struggle.
So here I sat, working, but taking a break from the screen. I let my mind quit the present task and noticed the bit of rearranging I’d recently done in the studio: books. My work space is on the sparse side which I prefer. Not a lot of nick-nacks and I’m actually winnowing things in my effort to surround myself only with the things that inspire.
The other morning I went around the house gathered the books I like most and brought them into closer quarters. I like seeing them. And since I like mine as much as I’m sure you like yours, a quick word or two on some of them (pictured above) how I came to them (or how they found me, which is more likely the case), and who I have to thank for it. At the end of this, if you care to comment, I’d love to hear two things:
1) What are you reading right now and why
and
2) Name for us a book that has moved your soul or mind profoundly (and I should warn you…I’m in a book-buying mood).
Here are a few of my most notables:
The Pendragon Cycle, by Stephen Lawhead. A friend of mine, Dr. Bob Beltz, mentioned this work way back in 1989. I have this odd and very deep need to read anything Bob ever suggests, and this series came into my life at such a critical time, informing so much I can’t put into words, that it has become a literary pillar in my own story.
Back To The Sources – Reading the Classic Jewish Texts, Edited by Barry W. Holtz. My buddy Kendall Ruth waved this tome right in my face about three years ago and I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive him for it. We almost tore the book in half in a brief tug-of-war. Meaning I have this rule that if I’m interested in your book, I get to have it. Right then, right there. It’s sort of My Rule. Well…Kendall didn’t quite come around to my way of thinking so I was reduced to actually ordering and (brace yourselves) waiting for a book to arrive. And though it was hell, it was a hell quite worth the wait. This book, all by itself, has done more to inform my spiritual journey and thoroughly arrest everything I thought I understood about God. It’s not for the faint of heart, trust me. And, no, it’s nothing new. Three years into it and I still haven’t finished it. It’s that amazing.
The Mary Russell Series, by Laurie R. King. My friend Kristy Armstrong badgered me for years to read the first of this series (The Beekeeper’s Apprentice). When finally I cracked it opened, it was love at first sentence. And I mean that literally. The very first sentence came off the page in the most lyrical cadence I’ve ever encountered in any other author before or since. Her work is, without rival, the most eloquent-without-being-forced weaving of word and tempo I have ever enjoyed. I’ve learned no less than twenty-five words I’ve never heard of from each book. If you’re a fan you know what I’m talking about. If you’re not and get hooked, you have the advantage of ten books already completed in which to lose yourself. And, trust me, have a dictionary at the ready.
The Ender Series, Orson Scott Card. My pal Tim Keel turned me on to these. Ethical dilemma set in the construct of science-fiction. Brilliant work.
The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafón. My neighbor and friend Nancy had some explaining to do the night I leafed through this one while at a dinner party at her home. Explaining, because she had the audacity to not let me steal it. Yet again, had to order and WAIT for a book. And also worth the wait. The richness of this reading experience is in a league all its own. The ability of Zafón to set up and deliver every one of the finer points of human relationship, from tone and tenor to mood and idiosyncrasy — but with an economy of words is amazing. I lose myself in his precision while still finding myself transported into the story. A must read.
So. There are a few of mine. Now…who’s reading what?
Blog About Blogging – Part III
(The third in a series of posts on the creating of Waltzing in Perdition.com For the first, click here.)
And now you understand why I just don’t understand why people call me a perfectionist.
In the next post, I’ll tell you what a nightmare it was finding a coder who understood that when I say Pixel-Perfect, what I’m really saying is “The straight jacket isn’t for my safety…it’s for yours.”
You would not starve for vernacular when it comes to the arena of web design—hardly a distinction in the crowd of other professions. Nevertheless, terms like ‘naming architecture,’ and ‘pixel-perfect,’ and ‘cascading style sheet’ are very much part of the daily diet around here.
So when I decided I’d wracked my brain enough and excavated the concept I wanted, it came time to hand it off to someone with far more coding expertise than myself. I knew I was going to utilize the WordPress engine, and since I’d turned my back entirely on the available themes for the custom style I’d been working on, I knew also that I had to find someone with a skill set geared specifically toward translating everything I’d done to something with which WordPress could communicate.
I searched for professionals on Craigslist, on Google, in local papers and by reviewing other blogs searching for credit lines that might put me on the trail of someone I thought I could trust. Talk about overwhelming. And confusing. In dozens of providers I found very little separating anyone from anyone else, turning my very focused search into something like a game of darts.
I ended up contacting a vendor from a popular online service. I posted the job I needed done and in no time (read: less than one day) had several dozen proposals from vendors all over the world. At prices that both encouraged and concerned me. I don’t know about you, but if something is wildly inexpensive, my mind goes to Wildly Poor Quality.
But I found someone whose work I was able to review and determine was a great place to start. While interviewing this person and discussing the precise work I needed, he read into my language and in between the lines and offered, “…oh, you want pixel-perfect.”
“Did you just say ‘pixel-perfect’?”
“Yeah. Pixel-perfect. You know, where exactly what you’ve desi—”
“I know what it means, believe me. Can I marry you?”
He understood that I insisted, unapologetically, that what I designed in Photoshop should translate to a blog absolutely. Down to the location of each and every pixel.
“And, I’ll know.”
“Lol you’ll know what?”
“I’ll know if there is a single pixel out of place, off-center, or bumped out of alignment. I’ll know.”
He laughed but understood me.
The problem with this (I mean this very kindly) complete idiot, was that he didn’t seem to believe me. Long story short, I discovered too late that though he presented himself as the executer of the actual work, what he was really doing was collecting projects and farming out the actual work to coders offshore.
Which is a nice way of saying that someone with a very wanting command of the english language was allowed to dabble in the design I worked on for weeks and offer ways they felt improved it. Which in Toddland means they thought instigating a nuclear war between nations was time well spent. That’s all I’m going to say about this person and my first experience with hiring outside help.
Granted, I was further along than I was when I started…but no where near my original version. Which sounded like this:
Cute Redhead: “So. How’s the blog design coming?”
Mount St. Helens About Five Seconds Before Erupting: “Well. I’d call it about 85% there.”
Cute Redhead: “Hey! That’s great! You can live with that, right? Yay!”
Moody Artist: “Um. No. No, I can’t ‘live’ with that.”
Cute Redhead: “Oh. Well. Then what are you going to do?”
Insufferable Designer: “I’m not sure. I think a SWAT team repelling down the side of his house and AK-47s is a good wa—”
Cute Redhead: “—I meant about your blog, honey.”
Trigger-Happy Perfectionist: “Oh. I’m not sure. I’ll start blogging, I guess. I’m chomping at the bit. But until this looks exactly the way I see it in my head, I’m going to be impossible to live with.”
Cute Redhead: “Wow. That’ll be different.”
Smart Enough To Shut Up (almost): “Shut up.”
In the next, and final post, I’ll tell you what it’s like to (finally)happen upon a master craftsman. And how, so doing, grace and mercy flows throughout the heart and mind to save the lives of lesser ‘professionals’. And their hacks.
Blog About Blogging – Part II
(The second in a series of posts on the creating of Waltzing in Perdition.com For the first, click here.)
My brain split in two and I had to concentrate very hard to listen to her and take in the fine points of the article about the camera with the left side while, at the same time, do my best to hang on tight while the right side went on a joyride. In a split second (and I’m not kidding lol) I realized I knew now what I was going to do. And how.
I was going to blog.
I suddenly realized how and why and where and what I was going to do. My only problem was that the board meeting going on inside my head was…well…stuck inside my head. But in a split-second I more or less saw it all design itself and, immediately after my friend left, pulled out a pencil and a clean sheet of paper.
Which always surprises me. Pencil and paper, that is. Because it’s 2010 and no one is really expected to use a pencil and paper anymore. But I do.
Which also surprises me. Because it’s 2010 and everything is electronic and computer and Photoshop and email and Facebook and iPhones (*sign of Cross), but before I put pixel to Internet I still start with a pencil and paper.
So, line-rectangle-square-rounded-edge-divider-divider-divider-those things I draw when I mean dummy text areas-erase/erase/erase (no, that won’t work)-line-line-line-done. And then the thunderstorm sent a bone-shattering bolt of lightening from the open atrium at the top of my laboratory, and I raised my fists to the sky and yelled, “It’s aaaAAAAALLLLLIIIiiiive!”
And then I hated everything I just sketched and decided there was probably a job opening for me somewhere in a shopping mall food court. I decided I was a horrible designer, a hack, a charlatan (ha ha, no one says ‘charlatan’ anymore!), and had no right whatsoever picking up a pencil, let alone firing up Photoshop.
And then I realized how much fun Moody Artist mode was and how much more fun it’d be with a gin & tonic (not that I would) (at 2 in the afternoon), but (yes I would) there was work (and no I didn’t) to be done, so I took another shot at a layout sketch.
And was pretty ticked off.
Because I knew what I was about to put myself through over the course of the next several hours. Which was to try and un-see what I’d seen in the blog design that first rattled my cage and design something that spring-boarded itself off the finest parts of that blog yet didn’t completely bastardize everything within a ten-mile radius. Try as I might, I just couldn’t bring myself to deny the fact that, as design and purpose and communication goes, I was bought and sold the moment I laid eyes on it.
But I’m not new around here and I knew there was no way I was going to not land right back where I started. Because even though there’s only so much one can do with a given amount of screen real estate, I couldn’t escape the tension of settling for anything less than what I’d seen and decided was the Best I’d Ever Seen.
So I gave up, caved in, swallowed my pride, and made quick work of 1024 pixels wide by 800 pixels high.
I was in full I’ll Know It When I See It mode, which is ToddSpeak for “I’m going to be impossible to live with until I get it out of my head and in front of me.” I needed a proper home for what I wanted to write. And not just what I wanted to write, but how. I was working out in my head something that I could be proud of to not only deliver what I wanted to blog about, but make the experience of delivering it something I actually enjoyed. Which is way more complicated than the process right-out-of-the-box actually is. I mean, you can go to any number of blog creating web sites and start Right Now.
That is, unless you have something so customized going on in your head it’s going to take and Act of Congress to wrest it from the recesses of your freak brain.
It was time to find someone who could take what I designed and give it a brain.
And a very big one, at that.
I wish I had a way to open up every folder within a folder within a layer within a mask within a channel…and show you all that I decided Had To Be Done. But the best I can do is this meager screen shot of the actual source file of the WiP blog in its native format. See that Layers palette on the left? I actually counted the individual layers in the original design. Now, mind you, though a great many of them are merged in the final form, the number is a little lower than the actual…but, then again, not really. Because everything is created in—and remains in—layers so that I can go back at anytime and decide I hate everything.
To the tune of (brace yourselves)
357 different layers.
And now you understand why I just don’t understand why people call me a perfectionist.
In the next post, I’ll tell you what a nightmare it was finding a coder who understood that when I say Pixel-Perfect, what I’m really saying is “The straight jacket isn’t for my safety…it’s for yours.”
Blog About Blogging – Part I
(The first in a series of posts on the creating of Waltzing in Perdition.com)
This whole blogging thing is very much a love-hate relationship, believe it or not. More love than hate, but the tension is ever-present.
It has to do with the arena of blogging and the alleged rules ordering the frontier. It occurred to me yesterday while working in the yard and I thought a bit of How Did This Happen was in order…all the better to explain What I Love About Blogging and What I Hate, that is.
About a year ago, I self-published my first book: A Beautiful Hell – Book One of the Waltzing in Perdition Chronicles. It was a great experience and one that dropped me smack-dab in the middle of something I’d been putting off and hiding from for years: writing publicly. A few radio interviews, a few small speaking engagements, and not a few Wait…You Did WHATs and I realized I never should have waited as long as I did.
I love writing. I love words. I love wordsmithing. I live for cadence and lyrical expression and, though I am an obvious fan of what they call the ‘run-on sentence,’ I’m an even bigger fan of the lethal minimalism I occasionally come across (without feeling the pressure to imitate).
As writing and other creative processes began to whirlpool, not the least of which was amateur photography, I made mention to my friend and neighbor Kirsten my wanting a digital camera. A few weeks later she stopped by to show me a certain blog who’s author used the very camera after which we both lusted. I’ll never forget that day, because when she pulled up the specific article detailing the camera, my eyes glazed over and I went into an artistic catatonic state.
Because the blog’s layout and design immediately arrested my attention and hit me over the head. I see a lot of design. A lot. I’m a designer and web developer, so it’s part of the daily diet around here. To put it mildly. And I don’t care if it’s kind or not, it has to be said: 95% of the blogs out there are ugly as sin. A mess. A train wreck of article and advertisement and Google Ads, and, worst of all, unoriginal regurgitated articles in the form of lists.
But not the one Kirsten showed me.
My brain split in two and I had to concentrate very hard to listen to her and take in the fine points of the article about the camera with the left side while, at the same time, do my best to hang on tight while the right side went on a joyride. In a split second (and I’m not kidding lol) I realized I knew now what I was going to do. And how.
I was going to blog.
“How Do You Write?”
“How do you write?”
I was asked this again recently and reminded that I said I’d write a bit about writing at all. Now that the WiP blog is finally laid out and organized the way I envisioned it nearly eight months ago, I’m willing to start putting some of this out there.
Notice I said ‘willing to’ and not ‘able to,’ because I’ve been able to all along. Just not willing to. And that sort of brings me to part of how I work be it putting pen to paper to illustrate, or pen to paper to write (albeit proverbially since I do it all electronically). I used to want to think I held a purist’s mentality about that—writing with real pen and real paper. The fact of the matter is, however, I type blazingly fast and find that function far more adept at keeping up with the thoughts bubbling up.
Willing to. I won’t cook unless the kitchen is cleaned. Not scrubbed clean, just once-over-and-put-away clean. I mean, I don’t have that kind of time and we don’t have that kind of live-in maid. Nothing too out of the ordinary; I just won’t start a project until my studio is organized. Or the kitchen counter is cleared of the last project-meal it sustained. If this strikes you odd, I’ll never understand why. If you happen to know anything about Synesthetes, refusing to do anything in the kitchen until it’s cleaned happens to be a hallmark idiosyncrasy of the wiring—something I happen to find hilarious for its specificity. Also for its dead accuracy.
My studio/office can be, like anyone’s, a war zone of piles of paper, books, and all manner of All Manner. Mostly I know where everything is (it’s my mess, after all), sometimes I don’t. Big deal. But when comes the time to start a new Anything, I have to have the proverbial fresh sheet of new paper. Meaning I have to clean my studio and have it completely organized or I am not willing to start.
Notice I said ‘not willing’ and ‘not able.’ Of course I can sit down at the drawing table or the desk and puzzle things out. It’s just that I find myself obstructed and ensnared by everything out of place such that the whole creative process is rendered impotent. It’s the very same mechanism for me in the kitchen. And lots of other areas in my life. If the room is clear, my head is clear. I don’t know if it’s a symbiotic fact or mental illusion. And I don’t care. I just know that unless it’s right in certain parts of the world around me, it’s not right in my head.
The WiP blog and it’s new iteration has been that for me. I’ve wanted to introduce the WiP Chronicles, the WiP Journal, the WiP Studio, the WiP Mic, and the WiP Store for quite some time. But the site overall wasn’t organized to my liking. So I refused. Where some might lean in and deal with what Is anyway, I’d rather fillet the skin off my arm and write in blood. I just refuse.
And I happen to love and hate that at the same time.
What I love: that I do it that way for me, on my own terms, and have no category for what anyone else thinks about it. Big shock, I know.
What I hate: until it’s perfect (according to the Rules Inside My Head), I coexist with a low-level frustration and anger very few understand. (Hint: most think they do understand but they don’t. I just smile and nod when they say they understand and don’t disabuse them of their presumption. The ones that do understand — and you know who you are — never comment on it or remark on it because it’s entirely inconsequential.)
“How do you write?”
Straight Answer: Very mechanically. I sit down with either a formed thought I want to articulate, or an idea or concept I want to struggle with. I have only two or three times in as many years actually pulled out a real sheet of paper and suffered very dormant penmanship. In fact, the last time I did that was to write “Beautiful” from “A Beautiful Hell.” And the reason I did that was because that particular story practically wrote itself. It was a matter of capturing it as quickly as I could and my laptop wasn’t handy at the moment. I saved those sheets too. They’re somewhere around here in some file. I’m a far less nostalgic than people suspect and normally do not hang on to such things. I’ve thrown out more cartoons (sorry Andrea lol) than people would believe. But those sheets I saved. Something about a story about my daughter written in my own hand. Of all the stories in “A Beautiful Hell” it’s my favorite. As much for the topic as the way it happened as the way it flowed from my pen. And if anything I write were to ever land snugly in any category deemed worth any sort of fame…well, I like the idea of keeping those sheets for my baby girl and someday giving them to her with, “…as far as I’m concerned…it started here.”
More Straight Answer: You’ll often find me with earphones in but rarely playing music. I will listen to white noise and though I will listen to some melody, it has to be bereft of lyrics and entirely unobtrusive. All that is just shutting out the world around me to excavate the words inside me.
Another Answer (Not So Straight): You’re going to have to bear with me on this one. When I have a story in my head it is less a composition in verbiage than it is in tone, tenor and (brace yourself) shape. I mean physical shape. I mean I see its physical dimensions and color(s) in my head. The animators at Disney have a storyboarding process I once saw provoking in me thrill and horror simultaneously. It was, if memory serves, the story of The Lion King on one long wall. Made up entirely of color. Not a single word. Just colors conveying the storyline as it unfolded. It was brilliant. That’s sort of what I’m talking about. So the actual process of actual writing is more like chipping away at base rock to bring forth the form in my head. It’s composed not of stone but of words, color, cadence, meaning and other physical sensations I’m not able to articulate to your satisfaction.
Notice I said ‘your satisfaction’ and not ‘my satisfaction.’
Until I feel the story to my satisfaction—in the process of writing, refining, holding, conversing, etc, etc., etc., bleah bleah bleah—it’s not done. And in this particular way, so I’m told, I’m insufferably incorrigible. That is, as far as Im concerned, I’m judge and jury. I write, draw, design, and (bigger shock coming here) speak with impunity. Meaning I refuse to try and second guess an audience. Meaning I couldn’t care less what they may approve or disapprove of.
And believe me, this creates more than a little friction. At times.
And believe me, I couldn’t care less. At all.
If there’s one thing I find *RCA Dog Head Tilt coming here* odd, it’s the idea that I should worry overmuch (read: at all) what anyone else may or may not like when it comes to creating. Many people do, I know that. I just have no category for it and do not at all see its ultimate value. So, no.
By the way, this has been cathartic..I’m articulating things I never — and I mean never — think about. I just do them. You’ll appreciate that fault when and if you ever watch one of the upcoming WiP Studio videos where I’ll stumble walk you through creating a cartoon start-to-finish, or a Photoshop technique. I’m not used to speaking aloud what I do naturally everyday. I’m sure it will be a humiliating mess until I edit it to something helpful.
So. That’s a bit of a look into how I write: sometimes it’s inspired and intoxicating, sometimes it’s rooted out and maddening. All the time, though, it’s for my pleasure and mine alone. I’d say I hope that doesn’t offend you but lol we’ve already covered that lie.
Creating, writing as much as any other medium, is very much its own reward.
Next time I’ll write about how several books developed to the point where I would finally start working on them.
Oh, and one last thing:
The photo accompanying this post? Well…I can’t resist it. I’m hiding at a favorite place only a handful of people know about, and one I’ve returned to when I’ve needed its familiar comfort. It’s been a maniacal couple of days so I completed some other tasks, packed up my laptop and camera and made my way to a favorite bolt hole, Sherlock Holmes style. And, yes, that’s a jet.
And, no, I’m not where you think.
Write On
Welcome to the Waltzing in Perdition Journal. I’d write more, but it’s 2 a.m. And anything I write now will probably not make any sense. So, sweet dreams. And here’s to writing and designing and publishing and editing and re-editing and all the rest!
