Tag: IWSG

#IWSG: Taking the World Very Seriously

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 20 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.  If you’re an insecure writer, then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more.

Once upon a time, a woman who takes the world very seriously told me that I ought to take the world very seriously too.  If I were to follow the example this woman set, then it seems that “taking the world very seriously” means sitting on the couch all day getting angry about whatever they’re saying on the news.

I’d rather not live like that, so instead I’m going to keep living my life “frivolously.”  For me, that means driving out to weird places in the middle of the night so I can see the stars.  It means reading lots of books about space, and watching lots of movies set in space, and sometimes it means annoying my friends with an endless stream of space facts.

For me, living frivolously also means going out on adventures: seeing strange new sights, eating strange new foods, and talking to strange new people.  Sometimes these strange new experiences turn out to be disasters.  Sometimes they don’t, and even the disasters can turn into fun stories later.

And speaking of stories, that brings me to the most important thing.  My allegedly frivolous lifestyle means that I am going to keep writing, writing, writing.  And I’m going to keep drawing as well.

Because the stuff they say on the news is not totally wrong.  There’s an awful lot of ugliness in the world right now.  But the correct response to all that ugliness is not, in my opinion, to sit there dwelling about it or yelling about it.  The correct response to ugliness is to make something beautiful.

It doesn’t matter what you make, specifically.  A poem or song.  A story.  A drawing or painting or sculpture.  It could even be a blog post.  Like I said, it doesn’t matter what it is, specifically, just so long as it’s beautiful.

Maybe all of that is frivolous.  So be it.  I’ll keep living my life frivolously.  How about you?

#IWSG: The Humbling of a Muse

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 26 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.  If you’re a writer and if you feel insecure, then this is the support group for you.  Click here to learn more!

I’m a sciency kind of person, and I think about the world in a sciency kind of way.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in magic.  I happen to know that a magical fairy person visits me while I’m writing and helps me with my writing process.

For today’s IWSG meeting, I’d like to turn the floor over to that magical fairy person, a.k.a. my muse.  She has something to say, and perhaps it’s something your muse would like to hear.

* * *

My fellow muses, I almost lost my writer.  This is a difficult thing to talk about, and a painful thing to talk about, but I cannot not talk about it.  My writer almost gave up on writing.

He was under too much stress.  He was dealing with too much external pressure.  At one point, he said he felt like life was squeezing all the joy and happiness out of him.  And every time I whispered in his ear “You should be writing,” I was making the problem worse.

Many muses would make the same mistake, I think.  After all, what could be better for a writer than writing?  But sometimes we forget just how much stress the so-called “real world” can cause.  I thought writing would alleviate some of that stress, but my writer felt like I was just making the stress worse, and he resented me for it.  And the more I tried to force the issue, the more I tried to assert dominance over my writer, the worse things got.

Deep down inside, my writer knew I was right.  Deep down, he knew that giving up on writing would not make things any better.  He’d learned this lesson about himself before, many times over; but he needed some time and some space to learn it again.

So I let my writer stop writing for a while.  I let him work on other things, and I let him experiment with other interests and passions.  Eventually, he came back to writing.  It was inevitable that he would, of course.  But in the end, he came back because he wanted to, not because I told him he needed to, and that makes a tremendous difference.

Obviously my writer’s recent stress is not unique.  The human world is an unsettling and unsafe place right now, for a multitude of reasons.  So if your writer is having a rough time writing, be patient.  Give your writer the time and space he or she needs.  They’ll come back when they’re ready, and we muses will be waiting.

#IWSG: A Brave New Muse

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 21 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.  If you’re a writer and if you feel in any way insecure about your writing, click here to learn more about this amazingly supportive group!

In the last few weeks, I have not been writing.  Not as much as I want to, nor as much as I believe I need to.  I have my theories about why this is the case.  I could tell you about those theories, but I don’t want to.  At this point, I’m tired of talking about what’s wrong.  I’m tired of examining and reexamining the situation from all these different perspectives.  I just want to get back to writing.

And that’s the whole point of the writing recovery plan, which I introduced in last month’s IWSG post.  Part of that plan involved shopping: stocking up on writing supplies, as well as art supplies and a few other creative necessities.  And part of the plan involved rereading some of my favorite books and rewatching some of my favorite movies: the kinds of books and movies that made me want to be a writer in the first place.

Well, my shopping is done, and I’ve gone through most of my rereading/rewatching list.  But the writing?  The writing still hasn’t come back, not in the way I was hoping.  It seems that there’s still one more thing I need to do.  Something I did not think of in my original recovery plan.

Regular readers of this blog have met my muse before.  She’s sort of a recurring character in my posts, especially in these IWSG posts.  I also keep a picture of her in my personal writing sanctuary, as a reminder.  I’ve been drawing my muse basically the same way for a long time: medium blue wings, a matching blue dress, high-heel boots.  But now I think it’s time to update her look.

So going forward, to the extent that there’s any sort of canon regarding my muse, this will be her canonical look:

Also going forward, this will be the picture sitting in my writing sanctuary, as a reminder.  And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m told that it is time to write.

#IWSG: The Writing Recovery Plan

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 16 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.  If you’re an insecure writer in need of some support, then this is the group for you.  Click here to learn more!

In my last post, I told you that I’m too stubborn to quit writing.  Stubbornness is a trait that runs in my family, for better or worse.  Stubbornness can be a virtue or a vice, depending on what you choose to be stubborn about.  So while I may be too stubborn to quit writing, I have realized in the last few weeks that I need to stop being stubborn about the way my writing process works.

You see, I’ve always been obsessed with plans and goals.  I like to plan out my day, my week, my year—my whole life, even—in meticulous detail.  But about eight weeks ago, there was a family emergency, and for the past eight weeks now, all my plans have fallen apart: especially my writing plans.

So if I’m ever going to get back to my old self, I need a new plan.  I call it a Writing Recovery Plan.  Given that it took me eight weeks to get to the point I’m at now, I figure it’ll take about eight weeks to get myself back to the point where I was.  So what will I spend the next eight weeks doing?  Well, I don’t know.  The plan is, essentially, to have no plan.

Maybe I’ll start writing Tomorrow News Network again, or maybe I’ll start something entirely new.  Maybe I’ll write a bunch of sciency stuff for the blog, or maybe I’ll blog about something completely different.  I don’t know.  And for the next eight weeks, I’m not going to worry about it.  I’ll simply let the muse point me in whatever direction she likes and see where that leads me.

At the end of my eight weeks, I’ll have to make some decisions.  I will never quit writing, but there are other aspects of my writing life and writing career that might need to change.  But that is not something I want to talk about or think about today.  Today, I simply want to tell you that I’m back, officially.  I’ll be blogging again on a weekly basis, covering topics that are… to be determined.

So next time on Planet Pailly, I’ll have something to say about something.

#IWSG: Too Stubborn to Quit Writing

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 27 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.  If you’re a writer, and if you feel in any way insecure about your writing life, click here to learn more about this amazingly supportive group!

Last month, there was a family emergency.  What happened was… well, wait.  How personal do I want to get in this blog post?

Bad stuff happened.  Like, really bad stuff.  And I’ve been dealing with the fallout as best I can ever since.  Finding time to write has been… difficult.  If there was ever going to be a moment when I would give up on my writing dreams, this was the moment.

But there’s one thing that’s true about my whole family: we are stubborn.  That’s not necessarily a good thing.  For example, it is not a good thing to be stubborn about medical stuff.  Seriously, if you’re feeling sick, do not try “toughing it out.”  Go see a doctor before you end up putting yourself in the hecking hospital!

Oh, whoops… (quickly turns the T.M.I. dial back down to zero).

Anyway, at this point the situation with my family is more or less under control.  Important decisions still need to be made, certain things cannot go back to the way they were before, et cetera, et cetera.  But the situation is more or less under control.  My plan now is to ease myself, slowly and gradually, back into my writing routine.  Because while life may have postponed my writing for a month, I am too stubborn to give up on my writing dreams entirely.

P.S.: And if you’re a stubborn person too, good!  I commend you for your stubbornness, just so long as you’re being stubborn about the right things.

#IWSG: Hey, Listen!

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 12 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group!  If you’re a writer and if you feel in any way insecure about your writing life, click here to learn more about this amazingly supportive group!

I’ve written a lot of these IWSG posts over the years, and many of those posts have featured my muse: the magical fairy person who nags me when I’m not doing my writing.  I tend to describe my muse in a certain way, and I tend to depict her a certain way in my art.  This has led to a few comments comparing my muse to a certain fairy companion from a certain video game.

Today, I’d like to confirm for you all that, yes, the idea for my muse was partially inspired by Navi from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.  Now I realize there are not a lot of Navi fans out there.  A lot of people found her super annoying, and she’s often listed among the most hated video game characters of all time.

But, gosh darn it, I liked her.  When I was a kid playing Ocarina of Time for the first time, I really liked the idea that I had this magical fairy person tagging along with me on my adventures.  Even if Navi didn’t always have the most useful advice to offer, it was comforting to know that I didn’t have to fight all those giant spiders and lizard monsters and creepy plant things alone.  And I guess, in this ongoing adventure of being a writer, the same idea still gives me comfort.

Now if only the act of writing could be as easy in real life as it would have been in the game.

#IWSG: Rewriting My Writing Rules… Again!

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 24 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group!  If you’re a writer and if you feel insecure about your writing life, click here to learn more about this amazingly supportive group!

So last month, I didn’t get much blogging done.  I was a little busy working on something else.  But I did have time last month to have a long, heartfelt conversation with my muse.  We ended up setting some new rules and renegotiating the terms of our writer/muse relationship.

There are plenty of writing rules out there, of course, but as my muse likes to say:

And that’s exactly what I did.  I took a look at some of the rules I’ve been following—both the rules I’ve adopted from other writers and also the rules I’ve invented for myself.  I cut some, edited others.  I condensed and combined a few things together.  Then, in the end, I presented my muse with the following letter:

Dear Muse,

I promise to write every single day, because writing requires daily practice, and my writing skills and writing stamina atrophy quickly if I skip too many days in a row.

I promise to do warm up exercises on a regular basis, because sometimes my brain needs a little help switching over from real life mode to writing mode.

I promise to work on a wide range of creative projects each week, because focusing on just one project leads to creative stagnation, while jumping between projects can help stir up the creative juices.

And if I break any of these promises, dear muse, I promise to write you a long and sincere apology letter, because that will help me learn from my mistakes and figure out how to do better next time.

Sincerely,

Your Writer.

I’ve written (and rewritten) plenty of writing rules for myself over the years, but I never thought to include those “because” clauses before.  Those because clauses make a real difference, I think.  It’s one thing to make up a bunch of rules and try to follow some sort of routine.  But rules and routines get boring.  Once that happens, it’s easy to forget why those rules were important, and excuses for breaking the rules are not hard to find.

So I’m going to make one last promise.  I promise to post my rules prominently in my writing sanctuary, because sometimes I need a quick reminder not only of what my rules are but why those rules are important to me.  And, as always, if it turns out these new rules don’t work out for me: writing rules are made to be rewritten.

So what do you think of my new writing rules, and what sort of writing rules do you follow?

#IWSG: When Your Muse Says Goodbye

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 11 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group!  If you’re a writer, and if you’re feeling insecure about your writing, click here to learn more about this amazingly supportive group.

So the other day, I woke up and found this mysterious letter on my desk: a letter from my muse.  She had something important to tell me about muse magic, and perhaps it’s something other writers need to understand, too.

Dear Writer,

Ever since we first met, you have constantly worried that you might one day sit down to write and find that I’m no longer there to help.  You’re afraid that I’ll leave you waiting there in front of the blank page, pen in hand, not just for a day or two but for weeks, or months, or years.  Or forever.  I want you to know that, yes, that is possible.  That could happen.

If you ever start to think you have all the answers, I will leave you.  If you ever come to believe that there’s nothing left to learn, that you’ve figured out all of life’s secrets and know everything that’s worth knowing, then I will leave you.  If you ever convince yourself that you’re better than everybody else, or smarter than everybody else, or more talented than everybody else, then I will leave you.

Of course I would never want to leave.  That’s not what I’m saying.  But we muses are simply unable to help close-minded, self-important humans.  Muse magic does not work on people like that.  So keep growing and keep improving, always admit when you’re wrong and try to learn from your mistakes, and then you’ll never need to worry about me going away.

Sincerely,

Your Muse.

#IWSG: Writing with COVID

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 29 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group!  If you’re a writer, and if you feel in any way insecure about your writing life, click here to learn more about this amazingly supportive group!

They say write what you know.  Sometimes writers follow that advice without intending to.  There’s a recurring theme in my writing.  I never noticed it was there until my editor pointed it out.  That theme is illness.

In the epic, sprawling Sci-Fi universe I’m creating for Tomorrow News Network, a lot of people get sick.  There are lots of space viruses and space parasites floating around out there, some of them natural, others manmade (or rather, alien-made).  I also tend to use disease as a metaphor for other things.  When my editor pointed this out to me, my reaction was basically: “Oh, that makes sense.”

It’s become something of a running joke among my circle of friends.  If there’s a big, scary disease in the news, James will probably catch it.  I’ve had tuberculosis.  I’ve had West Nile virus.  I’ve had swine flu.  To be honest, I’m surprised that I managed to dodge COVID-19 for as long as I have.

But last week, I found out that I’d been exposed to somebody who later tested positive for COVID.  Shortly thereafter, I started experiencing COVID-like symptoms.  I’m currently quarantined at home, waiting patiently for the results of my COVID test.

Needless to say: not a lot of writing is happening right now.  Not a lot of anything is happening, except sleeping, chicken soup eating, and binge watching Carl Sagan videos on YouTube.  But my muse assures me she will return as soon as I’m feeling better, and we’ll probably have another scary space plague to add to our epic Sci-Fi universe.

#IWSG: Ulterior Motives

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 27 Comments

Hello, friends, and welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.  If you’re a writer, and if you feel in any way insecure about your writing life, click here to learn more about this amazingly supportive group!

I don’t know about you, but my writing productivity crashed and burned toward the end of March.  Right now, I’m feeling insecure because I’ve done virtually nothing to prepare for this year’s A to Z Challenge.  I’m also feeling insecure because the timeline for publishing Tomorrow News Network, book one, has totally fallen apart.

I have no one to blame but myself.  Wait, no, that’s not true.  The coronavirus deserves a lot of the blame too.  Not all of the blame, but a lot of it.

So here’s my plan.  Even though I’m as ill-prepared for the A to Z Challenge as I could possibly be, I’m doing the challenge anyway.  My theme is the story universe I created for Tomorrow News Network.  Obviously, I have an ulterior motive for doing this.  It’s my way of saying: “Buy my book!”

Except the first book of the Tomorrow News Network series isn’t out yet. It won’t be released until (checks timetable, mutters curse at the coronavirus)—okay, I still have to figure out what my new release date will be.  But it’s coming soon!

I have a second ulterior motive as well.  You see, book one is more or less finished, but I still have to write books two, three, four, five (etc, etc, etc).  So as I tell you all about this fictional universe I’ve created, your feedback, dear reader, will be invaluable as I plan out the rest of the Tomorrow News Network series.

And lastly, my third ulterior motive may be the most important of all, given my current mental state during the coronavirus crisis.  As I said at the beginning of this post, my writing productivity crashed and burned near the end of March, and I’m having a tough time getting back into my creative groove.  I’m hoping that by participating in the A to Z Challenge—and by writing, specifically, about my own story universe—I’ll jumpstart my writing brain.  I guess we’ll have to wait until the end of April to know if that works.

In the meantime, please click here to check out the first Tomorrow News Network: A to Z post.  Today, A is for Alkali Extraction Incorporated, a faceless mega-corporation that’s mining alien planets for their resources.