Monday was the first time being back on personal social media for three weeks.
I had some guidelines in mind for how to relate to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter going forward, but I was also curious how things would go over the first few days without putting the plan in place. Since my little vacation had made me aware of some things, I wasn’t flying completely blind, but it was an interesting opportunity.
So what did I learn?
It’s been interesting working on this project and trying to find a story or poem on each page of this book without getting tied up in the context. One of the things that I’ve had to make peace with is that every page has the potential for success and failure.
There’s definitely some pages that I feel good about and some where I’m almost positive I’ve blown it. That’s not to blame the raw material available, it’s my ability on that day to sift through and find the pieces that will result in a poem.
As I mentioned before, the screenplay I’d been working on last year had stalled. Nothing really to do with any issues I was having with the story, it was mostly a combo platter of not being sure if I could convincingly write dialogue for people in their early 20’s (the story takes place at a college) and a heaping helping of “I don’t have a deadline so I’ll finish it when I’m good and ready.”
And I was fine with that for a long time. Until I wasn’t.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Neil Gaiman and his writing process lately, and one of the things I keep coming back to is that writers finish what they write.
When my wife and I signed up for Facebook just after the dinosaurs went extinct, our friends count turned into a contest. I think that might’ve been the last time that Facebook was purely fun.
I’ve been off personal social media for the last 18 days or so with my only dalliances being a quick check for messages while I’ve been doing my weekly business posts. I would’ve preferred a total unplug, but posting on Facebook and Twitter for business (as well as monitoring posts of same) is part of the job description when you’re self-employed.
Even so, it’s been illuminating what almost three weeks away from social media, and Facebook specifically, has done for me.
Here’s another one from my blackout poem experiment using a book as source material rather than a newspaper or magazine.
One of the toughest things for me to overcome has been re-reading the pages for the story as I’m working on them. I’ve found that the poems make themselves clear more easily if I’m looking for words rather than the context of the overall page or article. Trying to find that first word or phrase and then the next one that connects – that’s the fun part and it brings a degree of clarity. Re-reading just muddies the waters.
Over the last few days, I’ve been listening through the Penn Jillette episode of The Tim Ferriss Show while on the exercise bike and it’s been fascinating. Both subject and interviewer are great and there are lots of surprises throughout.
One of the segments that I listened to this morning was Jillette talking about his friendship with physicist Richard Feynman (starts around the 1:38:00 mark), someone whom Tim Ferriss has been interested in for years. The entire bit about Feynman is great, but two things stood out to me.
First was the way Jillette and Feynman met, which to me, is a great example of letting the world know what you’d like. At the time, Penn & Teller were doing a show in Los Angeles and put in their program a list of people that they’d like to see the show, and Feynman was one of them. After one of the shows, he introduced himself to Penn and also expressed appreciation for his description of science at the end of the show.
Ideas are worthless.
Yeah, I said it. Of course, I’m only one in a long line of people who have said it, so please don’t think any credit is due here.
In learning about screenwriting, I found there was two schools of thought: those who guarded their story ideas as if they were a precious hidden treasure and those who didn’t. And I can understand both sides.
There’s something about an idea that is special, but a lot of that comes from our perception of it and where it came from. The idea comes from us and most of us, for whatever psychological reason du jour you happen to subscribe to, would like to think of ourselves as special in some way. Even the idea that we aren’t special kinda makes you think you’re special because it feels like you’ve figured something out other people haven’t. You’re part of an elite. You liked the band before anyone else. You actually understand and appreciate Infinite Jest. Whatever.
One of my goals this year is to have a creative routine that will start my days off, using the “make before you manage” ethos I gleamed from Tim Ferriss and mashing it up with what I remembered from Austin Kleon’s morning routine. The idea is to have a set time each day before starting work that allows me to check the creative box, and is somewhat in line with why making your bed every day is a good thing – no matter what else happens that day, I did something that fed my soul.
One of the factors involved is that I am self-employed and work out of my home. My office is a downstairs room on the opposite end of the house from my bedroom – so there is a degree of separation, but those lines can blur pretty quickly. At some point, I’ll have to do a quick tour of my space that, in spite of not being on par with many writer’s rooms or studios, might be of interest to someone.
Continuing my new blackout poem project utilizing Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Adjustment Day as my raw material and coaxing a poem out of every other page through redaction. This is page 7.
I have a couple problems with YouTube videos promising a Whatever Step System To Getting The SOMETHING You WANT.
First, it’s never quite that simple. There’s usually a ton of truth in the video, but there’s also something that’s left out or glossed over that represents a somewhat significant piece of the puzzle. Usually, it seems like that bit happened before the person developed The System, so it gets tossed in the corner where they’re hoping no one will notice. What’s that? You had a lucky break because your cousin’s uncle’s cleaning lady knew someone in the industry who also owed them a life debt and helped get your first book published? Definitely leave that out. Or how about you actually didn’t know what the hell you were doing in the first place and happened to be in the right place at the right time? Sure… but this system will totally negate that thing!
The second problem? I usually wind up getting suckered in by them.