Eight hours, y’all. That’s how much sleep I need. Like, for real. If I get 8, I’m great.
If I get 8, I’m great 😂 Gonna use that lame shit alllll the time, now. If I get 8, I’m great 😂
Today was a good day. I’m doing genre research right now for my next book. It’s different than Starstuff. It’s grown up. I might actually write it under a pen-name for that reason, because I’m at least interested in some truly adult themes, like loss, violence, honor, prejudice, sex, profanity…you know, adult stuff.
But, anyway, I’m reading some of the tent pole series / success stories in this particular genre, and enjoying myself. It’s emboldening me, actually. Making me feel like, ah yes…I *can* do this. I do know this stuff already.
Of what I’ve read so far, I’ve enjoyed. If I had one stamp that I think I wished to make for my own writing, not necessarily to distinguish myself, because that makes it sound like I’m taking a shit on those who’ve come before more…no, I mean more like “this is a version of this genre that I think I can really fall in love and run with,” it would be to focus on characters. Characters are what make me engage with a story. The other stuff does, too; ancient races, big guns, bigger starships, traveling that stars, etc etc etc. But I’ve realized that for me to really, truly care about what’s happening in the plot, I have to have fallen head over heels for at least one, if not all the characters.
They have to feel real; alive, with wants and desires that I have, like me or people I know that I love or hate or admire from afar, or am scared of…but they have to feel like real people. That makes what’s happening to them, all the aforementioned cool stuff, well…it makes all that feel real, too.
And I think I can do that. One of the things I feel most proud of with Starstuff, and at the very least I’ve heard it as feedback from my (admittedly) handful of readers: I fell in love with the characters I created. They felt real.
I want to read a story where a good person who’s done bad things redeems themselves. I want to read a story where two people fall in love. Or out of love. Where a person falls to pieces, and where a person puts themself back together. I want to read about people going through people shit.
Those are the stories of legend.
I have one more thought tonight as I close what’s been a very tough three weeks or so: change is hard. Getting better is hard.
In his book Peak, Dr. Anders Ericsson talks about how growth happens when we push ourselves outside of our comfort zone in any given skill or activity. Outside our comfort zone.
Outside.
That means growth is uncomfortable. It’s not a pleasant experience. It doesn’t make us feel good, at least not while we’re actively in the midst of it. Our instinct in the face of such unpleasance* is to run. To quit.
It’s precisely when we should keep pushing forward.
As I’m beginning to feel more emboldened about my writing again, as I’m seeing what my next plan attack will be…I’m thinking that what was so scary and uncomfortable was growth.
I hope so.
* – this, for the record, is not an actual word. It should be. unpleasance (noun); the manifestation of something unpleasant, can be physical or a mental projection