IWSG: Following the Dream

December 4, 2013 ~ J.S. Pailly ~ 9 Comments

InsecureWritersSupportGroup Today’s post is part of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop hosted by Alex J. Cavanaugh. It’s a way for insecure writers like myself give each other advice and encouragement. Click here to see a full list of participating blogs.

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Back in July, I took a leap of faith. I switched from a full time job to a part time position, giving myself more time to focus on my twin passions of writing and illustrating. It was a scary moment in my life, despite the financial precautions I took to ensure I wouldn’t end up a homeless beggar on the street corner. Now it’s December, and I’ve learned that this writing/illustrating lifestyle I’ve chosen is harder than I expected, but it’s also more rewarding.

When I took that leap of faith, I imposed several deadlines on myself, but I underestimated how much time I needed to recover from the stress of my old job. I worked in the broadcast news business (and I still do, just on a part time basis). Anyone who’s worked in news will you how demanding it can be, both mentally and physically. It’s taken me the past five months just to become a normal human being again (and I’m not convinced I’m 100% back yet). As a result, I’ve missed most of my deadlines.

The good news is that I also underestimated my financial preparedness, the result of overestimating my living expenses. Going forward, the only factor that remains unaccounted for is the cost of health insurance (the Obamacare website keeps crashing on me). But for the moment, I don’t really have to worry about money. That’s been very reassuring, allowing me to focus on restoring my humanity.

So right now, my writing/illustrating income is zero. I’m way behind schedule for finishing the Tomorrow News Network anthology, and the Obamacare website is super frustrating. And yet, things are going okay. Despite all the problems I’m facing, I’m more committed to my writing than ever. My friends and family tell me I look healthier. I feel better about myself, and I’m optimistic about what will happen in 2014. Taking that leap of faith frightened me, and some of my fears were justified, but now I’m finding that following my dreams is easier than I’d expected.

IWSG: Whisper Worm

November 6, 2013 ~ J.S. Pailly ~ 6 Comments

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Today’s IWSG post might seem a bit strange at first, but please bear with me. I promise it is writing related.

Several nights ago, I had a dream. I was walking down a dark, empty hallway when I felt something touch my ankle. I looked down but couldn’t see anything there. I kept walking, but I felt it again, like a heavy weight crawling up my leg. When I looked again, some shadowy, indistinct shape was now halfway up my thigh.

In time, I could see better what it was: a fat, dark scaled snake. It wrapped itself around my torso, making it difficult to breath. Soon, I heard the snake’s voice, its tongue flicking my ear. It said things like, “For all the effort you’ve spent on your writing, you don’t seem to get many readers.” Or, “You know that thing you saw in the store today? You could afford to buy it if you went back to your old job.” Or, “Are you sure someone with your health issues should be pushing himself so hard?”

My pace slowed. I felt somewhat disconcerted, but, in my dream state, not nearly as terrified as I’d be in real life. After all, this creature¾the whisper worm, as I called it¾made a lot of sense. Even as it encircled and squeezed my neck, its soothing voice calmed me and made me realize what a terrible mistake I’d made trying to be a writer. Obviously, quitting now was the right decision. The sooner the better.

The whisper worm hissed a few final words of wisdom in my ear and unhinged its jaw so it could feed. I didn’t even realize I’d stopped walking forward.

Then a woman who I understood to be my muse appeared brandishing a sword. She ran toward me, her long hair streaming behind her, her dress magically luminous in the darkened hallway. Her eyes flashed with fury, though I couldn’t tell if she were angry at the whisper worm or at me for listening to it.

In one stroke, she lobbed off the worm’s head and then hacked its long body into bits. It was only then, as the monster dropped to the floor, that I realized how vile and treacherous this thing really was. Somehow, I could literally see the whisper worm had been full of lies (don’t ask how to visualize that¾it only made sense in the dream). These lies seemed to seep out of the squirming pieces like blood.

According to an article I read a few months back, scientists still don’t understand the purpose of dreaming. One new theory says that dreams are like training exercises. It’s a way for our brains to practice dealing with problems that the subconscious, for whatever reason, believes we may have to face.

I don’t know if my subconscious really thinks a talking snake is going to eat me, but it is true I’ve had more than a few discouraging thoughts since I left the regular job market to become a full time writer. The whisper worm only echoed things I’d already told myself. So maybe my subconscious is trying, in its own surreal way, to teach me how to recognize those thoughts for what they are: lies.

So this is my advice to all my fellow insecure writers: do not listen to the whisper worm. For many of us, writing is life, and this creature (or at least the lies it represents) really will try to strangle the life out of you.

Indie Life: BUY MY BOOK!

October 9, 2013 ~ J.S. Pailly ~ 6 Comments

IndieLife7 Today’s post is part of Indie Life, a blog hop for independent authors hosted by the Indelibles. Click here to see a list of participating blogs.

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Very soon, I’ll have my first indie book published, but I don’t want to become one of those people. You know who I’m talking about. The people who go on the Internet, log into Facebook or Twitter, and start screaming at the top of their virtual lungs, “BUY MY BOOK! BUY MY BOOK! PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD BUY MY BOOK!!!”

First of all, those people are annoying. Second, the “BUY MY BOOK!” marketing strategy doesn’t seem to work. I’ve gotten plenty of advice on how to market an indie book, and it sounds like the only truly effective method is to trust word of mouth. If you’ve written something that is really good, people will tell their friends, who then tell their friends, and so forth until suddenly you start making lots of money.

It sounds to me kind of like the chain reaction that takes place inside nuclear bombs. One neutron collides with a single uranium atom, which causes the uranium atom to release more neutrons, which then collide with more uranium atoms, until you get a massive explosion complete with a mushroom cloud.

So my question to all you indie authors participating in Indie Life today is this: how do you get that first neutron to hit that first uranium atom?

IWSG: What Writers Can Learn from Uranium

October 2, 2013 ~ J.S. Pailly ~ 11 Comments

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Yesterday, I wrote a brief post about the work of Pierre and Marie Curie, the famous physicists who helped determine the true nature of radiation and radioactive elements like uranium. In my life as a writer, I often find my roll models among great scientists rather than great writers, and the Curies are no exception.

The Curies had a goal: to figure out what was so special about uranium. This goal became the obsession of their lives, and they sacrificed a lot to achieve it. As they worked, the Curies made many startling discoveries, such as the discovery that uranium is not the only radioactive element. In fact, among all the radioactive elements they studied, they found that uranium was one of the least radioactive. It’s also thanks in part to the Curies, who in their ignorance touched and handled samples of uranium, polonium, and radium with their bare hands, and who kept these things in their home, that we now know how dangerous radiation can be.

As a writer, I have to stick to my goals just as much as the Curies stuck to theirs. I’ve had to make my own sacrifices, and where the Curies surrounded themselves with radioactive samples, I surround myself with notebooks, dictionaries, and thesauri. And just as the Curies’ research led to discoveries they never expected, my writing has led me in directions I never thought I would go.

P.S.: Hopefully nothing about my writing is as deadly as prolonged radiation exposure, but I have developed at least one writing related illness: carpel tunnel syndrome.

IWSG: Three Ridiculous Cures for Writer’s Block

September 4, 2013 ~ J.S. Pailly ~ 8 Comments

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Last month, I experienced what I like to call the Great Writer’s Block Crisis of August. I wasted a lot of time. I accomplished painfully little writing or in fact anything else. The cause of this writer’s block crisis is something that I’d like to keep private between myself and my muse, but since I know many other writers struggle with writer’s block I thought I’d share a few of the strange “cures” I’ve discovered over the years.

I picked up one cure from a book called The Art of War for Writers by James Scott Bell. In it, Bell tells a story about Ray Bradbury when he was writing the screenplay adaptation of Moby Dick. At one point, when Bradbury suffered from writer’s block, he got up, looked in a mirror, and said, “Behold! Herman Melville!” I’ve tried this myself, staring into a mirror and saying, “Behold! Isaac Asimov! or “Behold! Frank Herbert!” I sometimes let my beard grow out a little to help with the illusion. It feels silly doing this, but it helps me loosen up so I can write, and it’s a subtle reminder that my favorite authors (Asimov, Herbert, and of course Ray Bradbury) struggled with writer’s block just as I do.

Another writer’s block cure I discovered, purely by accident, is alphabet soup. One day, after a week’s worth of feverish writing, I felt like every single thought in my brain had drained out and poured all over the page. I felt empty, both mentally and physically… physically empty in the sense that I was suddenly very, very hungry. As I ate a bowl of alphabet soup (the only option available that day), I felt not only like I was getting the food I needed but also literally refilling myself with the raw materials of writing: the alphabet. I got right back to writing, and I’ve kept a few cans of alphabet soup in my cupboard ever since.

The final completely ridiculous writer’s block cure I want to share came to me partly because of my other work as an illustrator. For a recent short story I wrote set on the lost island of Atlantis, I also drew an illustration of two Atlantians, using toga costumes as reference. One day, while blocked, I decided to put one of the costumes on and wear it while writing. All of a sudden, I no longer felt like a 21st Century American Sci-Fi writer but an ancient Atlantian recounting the tale of my own people. By the time I changed back into normal clothes, I’d written several thousand words and plugged a few big plot holes in my story.

Of course all these ideas are silly. Maybe that’s the reason they work. Writer’s block is a psychological problem. It happens because you’re thinking too hard, taking yourself and your writing too seriously. The only way to cure that is to do something ridiculous, to loosen up your imagination and free yourself to see your story from a fresh perspective.

So how do you deal with writer’s block?

P.S.: If all of these ideas fail, I have one last cure. I write a letter to my muse, apologizing for the mistakes I’ve made as a writer and begging her to forgive me. If my letter is sincere, she usually takes pity on me and helps me out. This is how I got out of my writer’s block crisis in August.

IWSG: Saint Thomas Merton

August 7, 2013 ~ J.S. Pailly ~ 8 Comments

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A few years ago, a friend loaned me a book called Echoing Silence. It’s a collection of letters, essays, and speeches by Thomas Merton, an American writer and Catholic monk. That friend has since become my editor, and Thomas Merton has become one of my writerly heroes. He’s changed the way I write, not by changing my writing but by changing the way I think of myself as a writer.

Even if you’re not religious, you may find some inspiration in Merton. He saw being a writer and a monk as complimentary, or perhaps like two parallel roads leading to the same destination. Anyone as intimately involved with writing — or any art form — as Merton knows there is something mystical about the artistic experience. For some of us, maybe this is the only way to find God (or whatever religious term you’d prefer) in our lives.

While recently flipping through an old diary of mine, I found these notes summarizing Merton’s beliefs as presented in Echoing Silence.

Don’t waste time on monasticism if God doesn’t want you to be a monk. If God meant for you to be a writer, be the best damn writer you can be and don’t let anything get in the way (not even religion) because that would get in the way of God’s plan for you.
When you write, give yourself up to God. In other words, don’t do it to be famous but because it’s what God meant for you to be doing.
Don’t forget that you’re imperfect. Thomas Merton himself didn’t think he’d get into heaven no matter how much he devoted himself to God. We all make mistakes, both as writers and as human beings, so be humble about it.

The Catholic Church doesn’t recognize Merton as a saint, possibly because of that “not even religion” part or possibly because of rumors that his death was a suicide. Saints are supposed to be roll models, and the Church doesn’t want to create suicidal roll models. Regardless, what he has to say about the spirituality of writers and artists is worth reading. It inspired me, and for that reason he is a saint at least in my own heart.

IWSG: Leap of Faith

July 3, 2013 ~ J.S. Pailly ~ 29 Comments

InsecureWritersSupportGroup

Today’s post is part of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop hosted by Alex J. Cavanaugh. It’s a way for insecure writers like myself give each other advice and encouragement. Click here to see a full list of participating blogs.

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I recently made a huge leap of faith: I asked my job to let me drop to part time employment so I could spend more time writing. It was a scary decision, but I know at least a few of my fellow insecure writers might be thinking about doing something similar. So I want to share some of the steps I’ve taken to make this a little less terrifying.

Practice: I’ve been taking my writing seriously for at least the last five years. I write a minimum of 6000 words a week (sometimes much more than that), so I already know how to treat writing like a job.
Help: I’ve hired an editor to help me clean up my short story series and prepare it for publication as an ebook (it should come out by the end of this year).
Comrades: I’ve joined a local writing group, the Greater Lehigh Valley Writer’s Group, a.k.a. GLVWG (pronounced Gliv-wig). Through that organization, I’ve made friends—both beginners like myself and professionals working in the publishing industry—who give me real encouragement in what I’m doing. If you’re not part of an organization like GLVWG, I suggest you join one. You’ll be glad you did.
A Safety Net: This last one is key. Over the past few years, I’ve set money aside in a special savings account, enough to cover my living expenses (including health insurance) for a prolonged period in case things do not go as planned. This more than anything else keeps my fears in check because I know that even if I fail I will not end up starving and homeless. The fact that I’m still working part time helps protect me financially as well.

It took me years to prepare for the day I walked into my boss’s office and asked to go part time. Despite all my preparations, taking that leap of faith was still a scary experience. I have no guarantee that my writing can support me financially. I don’t know if I have the business sense to do what I’m trying to do. I’m not even 100% sure this is what I want to do with my life. All I know is that I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t try.

I hope you, my fellow insecure writers, found some of this useful. If you did, please let me know, or if you have any other ideas on how to make this leap of faith less frightening, please share them in the comments below.