That Goal Nearly Tripped Me Up!

How totally cool: I felt deflated when I realized I met one of my goals in exercising. I fit into what has got to be the most egregious example of vanity sizing. I got into a size 4 dress. It only took two months of not killing myself while working out (and how cool is that?).

Why is it cool that I felt deflated? Because the goal was met and I wondered, “What am I supposed to do now?” And it then occurred to me that I felt this way each time I reach a writing goal or an editing goal. I have to go: what’s next. And that’s wrong.

To some extent the workout goal is based on the fact that I love walking in the woods. I like working out and breaking a sweat. That part is easy. I also hate shopping and want to fit back into most of the clothes in my closet. Dropping weight was possibly made easier because I had to drop wheat. Those two elements of enjoying a two mile walk in the woods is part of a lifestyle thing. One of those elements where you shift your lifestyle in exercise and diet (diet as in what you take into your body, not some temporary plan of removing things for a short term goal).

Even though I have within my lifestyle exercise and diet, I also imposed short term goals of fitting into a dress. But even though I have another goal of fitting into a particular skirt with a ridiculous waist (which is sized closer to a legitimate 4, but is probably closer to a real 6, thus proving the ridiculous nature of the previously mentioned vanity sizing) I know I’m going to ask myself, “So, what’s next.” And it is a legitimate question, because by then, I’ll be skating the bottom of my BMI, and fielding comments about how much I don’t eat (which won’t be true, as I still love my steak, and if I have to give up wheat, I feel no compunction in eating dark chocolate).

In other words, what I am doing now by setting goals for lost inches or lost weight, may have troubled the lifestyle by making goals have more importance. The joy of walking through the woods, for instance, may have been taken over by the silly joy of fitting into an incorrectly sized dress. But for the joyous part: I realized this is how I also define my writing life.

The lifestyle of writing and work—something I truly enjoy—is defined not by just the pleasure of the work, but by page counts, word counts, how much I edited this day or that day. Because when that goal is over, I find myself with the same blah post I fit into that dress, and going, “What do I do now?”

Which is more important, to have goals, or to have a lifestyle of writing. I suspect both can be important, but the question is which is more important. Are those goals short term temporary versions of, “I’m on a diet so I can wear a bikini on the beach this summer,” type goals. Or are they reminders that we’re still on the path goals?

The only way we can tell is if we meet our goals and feel deflated: then it’s a temporary one, and I recommend you eat a pint of ice cream or have a scotch or a glass or three of wine. But if you think: Cool. And then forget about it because another story has come to mind. Then they’re stepping stones to what you are doing anyway, because the joy of walking through the woods, the joy of writing this character’s escapade or that scene and this next book that won’t shut up.

So May your goals be stepping stones that don’t trip you up while you’re working.

I forgot the story...

Instead of leaping into work, I leapt to the computer to surf Facebook and the News. I discovered a clip on Fox news and found myself listening to Gary Vaynerchuk talking about his book Crush It! The book is about how to “Cash into Your Passion.” What is my passion? Writing, editing, and practically anything to do with Book. So I say. But after I finished my edits on The Bone Reader, and started working on writing the next novel, the desire to leap out of bed sort of faded. What went wrong?

I could relate a lot of babble about internal mythology of walls that block me, except a walk in the woods helped me realize how much that’s a delusion. Anyone, even writers…possibly especially writers, know a lot about fiction; if it is good fiction, we want to believe it. Be it Fantasy, Romance, or Science Fiction.

As I was reading what I could get off the “Look Inside” for Crush It! I read how he apparently lives his life with three principles: Love your Family, Work Super Hard, Live your Passion. Was I living my passion? Well, again, I say that I am. But his litmus test on that is by seeing if we’re 100% happy, and I’m not.

I am reminded, then, about something that occurred to me on my walk. It wasn’t just the delusions that stopped me, or echoed an internal mythological struggle. I found myself wanting to write this new novel with non story focused reasons. I wanted to bring in characters because they’re cool. I wanted to impress a friend. I wanted to make the story dramatic. And hadn’t I been here before, which was why I dropped my whole Contemporary Suspense series? I had gotten into a rut where I kept forgetting the story.

Yes, I want to write cool characters, interesting dilemmas, and heart pounding conflicts. I want to impress not just one friend, but as many readers as I can reach. In other words, they’re not bad things, but… the story is my passion. That other stuff is and always has been secondary. It doesn’t even have to be written by me. It’s why I love to edit other people’s stuff. It’s why I can be ruthless towards the writer. In some ways I care about him or her, but I adore their story more.

I was about to apologize, but I think I won’t. Because it is true; I care less about the writer than the story. And I have forgotten that. So, saying that, I’m off to write. Hero wants to chat with me, and so I must go and listen to what he (and not what I imagine other people think that he…) has to say.

The Adventures of Funny Gnomes: the revised purpose

I’m not sure what exactly happened to make me drop the writing project I’ve spent almost three years on. The Mia James stories began around April 2003; a draft was finished in 2007. Unfortunately it earned laughs from my expert-beta reader. It wasn’t supposed to do so. I tried again, with the draft that used the humor and shifted the character. I worked on it till Friday 23 October 2009.

I won’t claim that the novel, Other Sort of Monsters, was horrible. I think that there was a lot of good in the writing, as well as an interesting story. I probably also learned a lot about writing in the effort. But I wasn’t writing it because the story was good. I was trying to make it good.

A number of factors brought me to this place. One was a story my mother told. A couple of others might be my having to give up wheat, as well as the goal to do 100 crunches a day. One of the more important may be a friend’s comment that she thought a publisher might like my novels Fate of the Red Queen or The Bone Reader. Additional aids may have been Kapleau’s The Three Pillars of Zen. Maybe the Muse just bopped me with her magic wand, or Fate said it was time.

With apologies to my twin, the story my mother told me was about when I started to crawl. I showed early on that I was my father’s child. Ever practical, I’d put a toy in my mouth, take two in my hands and crawl on my elbows. My twin, possibly even more practical, would just sit and wait till I came by and take one of my toys.

And part of my shift came from this bad poem that I wrote on the day I gave up Mia James:

My practicality, taken from my hands,

A toy or a choice, unfreely given,

Fine. Have this thing.

Did I surrender a piece of myself

When giving away this object?

And in Steven Pressfield’s book The War of Art, he asks, “If I were feeling really anxious, what would I do?” He goes on to write about how Arnold Schwarzenegger would, on a freaky day, head to the gym, even if he were there all by himself with no one to be impressed by his effort. Working out was where he would center.

Little things came together, and my writing was re-born.

I shelved Mia James and all her novels. I put away the work of more than three years, to pick up the work I’d put down for about that long, that I’ been working on for longer. I read the latest draft of The Bone Reader, and found myself working all day. Even better, there were times I would look up from the manuscript and realized that nothing had bothered me all day. All the concerns I had, such as being single, or feeling 42, my twin taking my toys, or how I was going to pay my bills, went away. They had been gone. Even better: I wanted to work. I didn’t care about those things I had used as distractions, things I’d wanted to use to help me pretend I was happy or healthy. While working on The Bone Reader, I hadn’t given anything away.

So, the blog is no longer The Constant Comma. I don’t care about my pretentious ideas of my abilities in understanding language use. It was never the point. And I had forgotten. This time, the toy hadn’t been taken out of my hands, I’d tossed it so I could be proud and, worse, I also got snarky because of that.

So this blog is now the Adventures of the Funny Gnome, and within days, the Mab Morris site will be all changed. And I’m really writing again, and not just pretending.

He Put His Truck In Reverse

He asked about canvas. It was a passing comment, an idle one, perhaps. Did he remember I was the one who painted a mural? He said canvas was hard to find up here. He could only get it down in Cumming. I offered to buy more canvas the next time I went to the store.

He was more comfortable talking about his dog while we waited for the school bus, and the fact he needed hip replacement and was living with his daughter. A neighbor I’d only met because I waited for my son and he waited for his granddaughters after school. Gravelly voice, cigarettes, without—possibly—the more formal education that led me to paint as a hobby, or write. But the dog talk was over and he felt a bit more comfortable. He talked about oil painting, wondered about acrylics and then the bus came.

I did not think much of his comment, till five hours later my daughter said, “Someone’s here.” I looked out and could see his red truck. I walked out and he asked me about the mural.

“That’s acrylic?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t wash off?”

“No. It’s on wood. It was a boring wall, so I put a painting there.”

“I can’t sketch,” he said.

“But you can paint?” I asked. “It uses different skills.”

“I guess I haven’t done a lot. I haven’t tried.”

He was nervous, looking behind him. I wasn’t sure why. I couldn’t tell if someone was in the car. My daughter wanted to show him her art, and ran inside. I was thinking of the painting she’d inspired, and wondered if she was going to take it off the wall; it would have been too big for hr to carry.

“I’d like to know…” he sauntered off topic, and then finally came back to, “My granddaughters. I’ve got two paintings and they thought, ‘Wow.’ It’s in their rooms. I’d like to know if I’ve got anything.”

“I’d like to see them,” I said.

My daughter interrupted again. She couldn’t find her drawing. I couldn’t have told her exactly where it was, but it was raining. I didn't want her to bring it out. I invited him in to see it, but he gestured to his hip as an excuse. Perhaps he was being polite. Perhaps he was afraid of invading my privacy.

“I’ve done landscapes. An ocean with a lighthouse. I don’t think I want to do landscapes,” he said. “I know I’m here to paint something.” I could see the need. I'd seen it in my own work, my writing. I had been coping with it that very day.

“Abstracts?” I asked. A shot in the dark. Perhaps he needed to think of a different style.

He did not know what I was talking about. The neat thing about loving books is that you collect them. My daughter ran out with a drawing, and so I asked him to hold on a bit. They talked drawing. I went in and picked one of my more worn books on Modern Art. I thought it looked less intimidating. It was one you could get paint all over—if he borrowed it. It also had some classic styles in the beginning.

I brought it out and showed him the book. He asked about abstract art, and I showed him some pictures.

“Take it with you. Look it over and see if it inspires you.”

He looked at it and tried to hand it back. “It scares me.” He said something about the vision of the world he wanted to paint. I offered the book to him again.

“Are you sure you don’t want to take it?”

“It scares me,” he said.

I asked why, wondering if it were some of the more ‘shocking’ pictures we might have passed, wondering if I’d stumbled across a religious objection. And then I noticed something else. I knew why he was nervous. There was a tear in his eye. His graveled voice deepened.

“I won’t have any more excuses,” he said, giving me back the book. But just talking with me about art, he took a step in being brave.

“I’ll be here if you want to talk about it,” I said. “I know about fear.”

An old man with a vision. A possible skill, and a need to put it down on canvas. With tears coming down his face, he put the truck in reverse.

Funny Gnome Editing

Gerry is upset with me: I’ve had this blog and I haven’t said a WORD about the Funny Gnome. The thing is that I loved my essay that I wrote years ago about The Funny Gnome and Carrol Creatures. It was cute and well written. But it’s also outdated. And he knows this. He’s wondering why I haven’t written something new.

Years ago at my first and—as yet—last Dragon*Con there was a panel on writing with others. One of the panel members (and I’m so sorry I can’t remember his name) had a story about writing a Guns and Violence in the City pilot for a network. The producer read it and said, “Yeah, it’s interesting, but I want a dwarf and a cottage in it. Put in a dwarf and I’ll buy it.” Needless to say the writer thought he was insane. How in the heck would it fit? Like Santa in a Panzer. The writer took it to a friend who said, “Well, something is clearly wrong with it. Find it and fix it, and for G*d’s sake don’t put in the damned dwarf.” They brainstormed, found the problem…and it was sold. And editing history was made.

I don’t have a dwarf, but a rather opinionated gnome named Gerry. He puts handprints all over manuscripts where it’s funny—as in something off. Not as in a joke. Granted, he finds it hilarious. He’s not a Muse. He’s not even the Bombshell in gnome clothes (which represents when writers try to do something to impress but don’t quite pull it off). He’s on the support staff after the Muse has come and gone and you’re left with an inspiring piece of writing that still needs some work.

The reason I like Gerry and his Funny Gnome hand prints is that he’s not concerned about comma placement (though he can be) or great prose. He tries to get my attention to those places that are a bit off and that I try to skip over. He’s gets into the smallest places too and doesn’t mind bringing his own sarcastic humor to my editing. He thought the floating eyeball searching the room was hilarious.

Maybe he does this because if the Great Muse gives us anything, we need to give it our best, make it as clear and as beautiful as what we were given—even when the story is tough, intense, or even dark. Gerry and other Funny Gnomes don’t want us to pretend that the wrong elements fit, or that we can skip over important elements. So here’s to the Muse’s (and our) editing support staff. Thanks Gerry for helping me love editing and have fun with it!