Live. Achieve. Repeat.

Write. Finish. Repeat.

It's the most simple writing advice you'll find, and perhaps the most profound. It changed my course as a writer, and it just might change my course in life.

Here's what I mean. A common theme of this blog is momentum. You discover the end of your story by writing continually until it's finished. Work ethic beats inspiration nearly every time. Keep moving forward. I blog about that idea frequently, and to a lesser extent, I practice it in my own writing. Because, "life."

Life gets in the way of everything, including living your life. You name it, the issues are there. Drowning in the massive amounts of hours worked. Fighting a lingering illness, and the illness cheats. Reeling from an unexpected loss. Finally, FINALLY, breaking down and buying that 6th book in the Hitchhiker's Trilogy and discovering you were right- it's nowhere near as good as the stuff written by Douglas Adams.

All that can get in the way. If you're not careful, it can get in the way of far more than just writing.

It occurred to me this weekend that life is as much about momentum as writing.

Write, finish, repeat? Yes. Apply the same principles to life and what do you get?

Live. Achieve. Repeat.

Write/Live
Repeatedly, Neil Gaiman has told aspiring writers, "You must write." Too many get this part wrong. I've even had people argue with me over this point. The truth is, if you never write, you never write.

And if you don't live, well that's even worse, isn't it? Admittedly, "live" has several connotations. Here's what I mean by it.

Live to the max each day. This is not simply about enjoying life. It means making positive steps in your life. What's important to you in your life? Writing, family, friends, Doctor Who, church, health? Make sure you're making a positive step in one of those areas, minimum, each day. Most days you'll be able to make positive steps in multiple areas. And you know what you're doing? Living.

Finish/Achieve
Neil also said, "You must finish what you write." This, more than anything changed the way I looked at my craft. I finished lots of stories, and I got better with each one. Hmm. In retrospect, I've kind of moved away from finishing everything I start to write. Guess what the end result has been? I haven't written nearly as many stories since I stopped focusing on that. That's a good reminder.

In life, focusing on achieving has the same effect. Take health. I've written about fitness a few times here, because it's one of those areas I had to focus on. Doctor's orders. And you know what I couldn't do? I couldn't do it all at once.

So, I focused on daily achievements. Regular workouts. Reducing sugar intake. Blah, blah, blah. Once I finally accepted the need, I had mini achievements each day. So far they've added up to 40 pounds of weight loss, with adding muscle definition.

Repeat
It's so easy to just give up. This can come after a great accomplishment, or a painful setback. Both circumstances can make a person sit back- the former to enjoy and the latter to wallow.

But you know what? If we focus on moving forward in life, becoming better at what we do and who we are, we'll achieve far more.

Writing's worth it. So is living.

Tooth: Hurty

Brace yourselves. There's some dental puns in here. Feel free to extract the bad ones.

About 3 or so years ago, I chipped a tooth. It didn't hurt much, after the initial incident, so I figured it could wait. After all, I didn't have dental insurance at the time. Yeah. Time to wait.

Fast forward about a year and a half. The pain grew, and now I had insurance, only they didn't cover major work until after a year of coverage. Would this constitute major work? Heck if I know. Cause you know what? I didn't ask. Instead, I opted to wait.

Sometime after that I ended up switching jobs, which meant I switched dental insurance again. You'd think I would know the drill by now, wouldn't you?

Fast forward again. After getting a cleaning, the prognosis is a root canal, and a filling in the tooth next to it. Here's the problem. For the root canal, the insurance required 100% of the payment up front. That was more unnerving than the procedure. Now, if I had the means for that, I might have gotten this taken care of years ago. No way was I fast forwarding again though.

I took the antibodies, and held off on filling the pain prescription. Here's how that conversation went.

"Do you need pain pills?"
"I don't know. If it keeps getting worse, then probably."
"I'll go ahead and write you a prescription for them. Just take them if you need them."
"Sure thing. And if I don't need them, I can get $5 a pill on the street, right?"

Okay. I made that last bit up.

Instead of getting the root canal in a week, it ended up being more like three weeks. By the end, I'd run out of the antibodies, and started taking the pain pills. No favors for me there. Haven't had any since somewhere around 3:00 am Tuesday morning. They tore up my stomach. Vomiting, constipation, cramps, and those are just the upsides. Even today, I can barely eat from whatever that did to my insides.

To complicate matters, I started putting heat on the mouth. It felt better. Apparently, that's the worse thing you can do- it builds up the infection. Seems like the dentist's office should have told me the whole tooth about that.

Nevertheless, at 10:30 Tuesday, I had the procedure. Dentists don't believe you when you tell them, "I have one of those jaws that don't numb easily." But guess what? I have one of those jaws that don't numb easily. I'd call them names for that, but dentists have fillings too.

She gave me the gum gel, inserted the needle with the heavy duty stuff into my jaw, and then did it again. The second time, it I thought she was trying to disembowel me through my mouth. Sorry, but the constipation wasn't that bad yet.

They told me to raise my hand if I had any problems. So, at one point when I started feeling sensation again, kind of ike someone is trying to pull a nerve out of your tooth, I held up my hand. The dental assistant shook her head, "no" and lowered my hand. I think they gave me more medicine though, because the pain stopped shortly after.

Since then, I've been out of it. My mouth is swollen even more than before. It still hurts, though not as much. Think I'm going to have to get that other cavity taken care of soon. Food doesn't taste the same, and even though I know I have to eat, trying to eat makes me sick to my stomach.

No, I'm not going to try to tie this into writing, except to say, this is why I haven't written for a few days. It's a shame too, as I'd built up some pretty good momentum. I'll get back to it soon.

In the meantime, thanks for letting me vent. This tooth issue still leaves me unfulfilled.

Write What You Feel (and more)

You know that old saying, "Write what you know?" If you're interested in writing, and the fact that you're reading this blog suggests that you are, then the answer is probably "yes."

You've probably also heard multiple remarks about the saying, some funny and others not so funny. If not, I'll give an example and let you decide if it's funny or not.

"Hey Scott. Why do you write these weird stories?"
"What do you mean?"
"You know, like this one about alien cat people who use their advanced technology to invade our timeline, starting the zombie war decades before it originally happened in 2032?"
"Oh. Well like they say, 'write what you know.'"

I know. You saw that coming a mile away. That's the advanced time technology at work.

Here's the thing. "Write what you know," doesn't mean only write what you're familiar with. Otherwise, we'd never have stories about a police box that's bigger on the inside, carrying an alien with two hearts across time and space. And you know what? That'd be a shame.

Write what you know means write what you feel.

Here's some examples. Do you know the elation you feel when you see your child for the first time? Can you recall a time when your heart was torn in two by the loss of a loved one? How about the bone chilling terror of someone sticking a gun in your face and demanding your money?

Write about that. AND HERE'S THE BEST PART! You don't have to write about a newborn child anymore than you have to write about a robbery or anything else from your life. You can, but you don't have to.

Take the joy of the newborn child and use those real emotions to describe the happiness of a long awaited reunion. Take that loss of a loved one, and draw on those feelings when your character looses her job. Take the terror of the mugging and show the fear of dangling over the edge of a cliff.

Write what you feel. Sometimes, even write about what made you feel that way.

I'll add this to it. Write what you feel like writing about. That'll carry you through 90% of your writing duties. Yes, I made that statistic up on the spot, but it feels right, doesn't it? Sometimes, you have to push through as a writer and finish projects (or start them. Or continue them.) However, most of the time, your passions can carry you through the work.

Another example. I wrote a long outline for a story last night. It's a good outline of a story that I've wanted to tell for a few months now, but couldn't figure out what really happened. Now I know. But guess what? It's still not ready. I could have started it, but I didn't want to. Something else was on my mind. That's okay. It'll wait.

Instead, I finished and submitted another story, which I'd also put aside temporarily. And, like my last blog entry, I made progress.

Take those feelings-- the grief, the triumph, the hope and the despair. Which one, or ones do you want to write about? Which idea has you jumping up and down inside? When possible, write about where those passions are. And always, write what you feel.

Slightly New Approach

Life has been, well, it's been too much like life lately. That's almost as great for a writer like me as it is terrible.

Life's woes create powerful emotions to draw from and pour into my craft. At the same time, those woes and emotions war with the will to write. That doesn't even allow for the hectic schedule I maintain.

I hear you thinking out there. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Life stinks. So does mine. So does everyone's at some point. Get over yourself." And you know what? You're correct. If that's all this post was about, then it could be a wasted post. We're making our way to the writing inspiration in just a moment.

And, I'm not saying that life is completely terrible. For instance, as of this morning I've lost 32 pounds from the heaviest I weighed myself. Since, at some point  I stopped weighing myself because it became too depressing, I suspect I've lost even more than those 32.

I'll tell you how I did it, partly because I like talking about it, but mostly because it's a nice transition to the new writing approach.

I made a lifestyle change. I'm not dieting. I'm not doing crazy fad workouts or starvation plans. The doctor said I had to change my lifestyle or take blood pressure medication, and I didn't want to go on medicine for that.

Two changes. That's it. I started eating right, and started exercising right. (It would have been just as accurate to leave off the second "right" in the previous sentence.)

Briefly, the eating changes include increasing my water intake; lowering my dairy intake; removing all wheat and most whole grains; sticking primarily to meats, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds. I only drink water, almond milk, green tea and the occasional milk. I've increased my (good) fats and protein by a wide margin.

As far as the exercise go, I alternate days. The on days includes HIIT, heavy weights usually performed in a circuit and laps in the swimming pool. In the off days I only swim.

Beyond all the built in health benefits (which I've ghost-blogged about with some success over at Blogmutt.com) of these choices, there are two reasons they have worked for me.

Persistence and consistency. I don't miss a day exercising. Eventually I will, and that's okay, the body needs rest. But, you'll find me back at it the next day. Same goes for eating. I allow myself treats from time to time, but even then I try to choose healthier alternatives to my previous habits.

My muscle gains and fat loss were dramatically fast. At first. I continue to see the same changes, although it's more gradual.

Gradual is good.

Light-bulb.

I reached the point in writing where I was writing in spurts, or not at all. More often than not, it was "not at all."

But, as I posted earlier, writing is a lot like going to the gym. In this instance, steady progress that is consistent will lead to results. My new approach is simple. Work on writing every day. I used to hold myself to amounts of time, or a certain amount of words. That worked for me, but only when I could maintain the incredibly busy pace of my life.

Now, I'm not going to let a day go by without working at the craft. Sometimes the words are going to flow super quickly, like the first ten pounds or so that I lost. Sometimes they'll trickle, but the progress will be gradual.

If I make progress in a day, then it's a good day. Just before this blog, I nailed down a 500 word outline to a new story. I'm not usually much of an outliner, but this story required it. I have little in the way of actual prose (just a few lines of dialogue) but you know what I do have? Progress.

Oh, and I also have all those fantastically powerful emotions I started this blog with. They'll come in handy as I continue to write.

Just a Poem

     tomorrow
silently screaming in the
desert of solitude
peeking through slivers
of this empty soul
     just like today