The Harry Dresden books have provided me with happy hours of fun reading, ditto the latest Kate Daniels installment, and now I must find something else fun to read. There’s a Kim Harrison I haven’t read yet, and Patricia Briggs will have a new release this summer, but in the meantime…read anything fun lately?
Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there. I’ll be seeing my mom later on. When I thought about the approaching holiday, I realized that tradition was not for me. I’ve been cooped up writing, cooped up with flu, and the last thing I wanted was to be cooped up in a crowded restaurant while everybody in the world went out for brunch at the same time. So I told my husband I wanted to go geocaching.
Not being overly tradition-bound himself, he downloaded Geobeagle for the G1 and nabbed the information for several nearby caches, and off we went with kids in tow to go treasure hunting. (Geocaching is a great family activity; what kid doesn’t want to treasure hunt? Or play with a GPS?)
I solemnly declare this the best Mother’s Day ever, and it’s proof that sometimes you have to make your own new traditions. Experiment.
Experimentation and not being bound by tradition is useful for writing, too. I have some pieces that I have decided I like enough to finish…but not as they started out. My voice has evolved, and I want to experiment on them. Not unlike geocaching, I have some direction and hints, but it’s a trip of discovery and there’s no pressure on the results. If they don’t lead to something interesting, nobody else ever has to see them. But I want to try a different approach that builds on my strengths as an intuitive/character writer and also incorporates the kind of plotting I like to read and write.
I think it’ll be fun. Meanwhile, I’m not waiting an hour for a table in a restaurant and there are more geocache points to hit. Enjoy your day, whether you follow a tradition or invent your own.
We went to see Star Trek last night, the first available showing, kids in tow. They’ve seen many of the movies and series episodes on DVD, so we judged the content would be within what they could handle; use your own judgment for your kids, but ours loved it.
When I first heard a new Star Trek was coming out, and started to see the teasers, I was hooked but I wondered how they could possibly make a new version of the original that would work, given the sheer weight and depth and breadth of Trek history.
Well, they did it like a zero-G ballet, an incredible performance that one part of my brain was admiring as a technical feat while the other 98% went SQUEE and ZOMG and WOW.
I can’t wait to see it again. I can’t wait to see the next movie, the series, whatever they do with this reinvention. The cast is perfect, the writing was fantastic, the visuals wonderful; my five year old especially loved the part in the rings of Saturn.
Go see Star Trek. See it again. And join me in the anxious wait for the next one, because whatever they do, I’m on board.
The longer I write, the longer I watch my husband’s creative work (he develops web applications), the more I see that to be productive you have to pay attention to what makes you happy.
You don’t hear about this from writer’s organizations. You hear about how this or that contract term is evil and must be abolished, you hear about how you have to have an agent or you have to do book tours or you have to go to conventions and pass out your bookmarks. You don’t hear about something without which none of the rest matters.
If you aren’t happy, you don’t produce. No, really. I can testify to this from personal experience. Writers aren’t machines who can churn out product endlessly without having what they need to fuel the process. Writing a novel isn’t a matter of typing two to four hundred pages. If that were the case, anybody with enough stamina to keep typing could write a satisfactory novel.
I think that rather than focusing on whether you’re doing all the things your writer’s organization/other Publishing Authority tells you to do, a far more crucial career consideration is the ignored metric: does it make you happy?
Listen, if there was a formula authors could follow to be #1 on the NYT list, everybody would be there. If having this stricken from your contract, that agent, a publisher who does hardcover or sends you on a book tour was the answer, why isn’t it working for everybody who dutifully does what they’re told?
Because there is no formula, except the one Joseph Campbell proposed; follow your bliss. Happiness is your guide. Does it make you happy? Do it. Does it make you miserable? Don’t do it.
This is not guaranteed to put you on the NYT list, or make your books succeed critically, or make you the darling of your writer’s org, but following happiness is a very simple metric anybody can apply, and it ensures that no matter what level of success you’re at, you’re enjoying it.
I’ve been photographing my apple tree as it buds and blossoms because it makes me happy. I cut and arranged lilacs the other day because that made me happy. I have watched hours of Battlestar Galactica episodes and chewed through Harry Dresden books because it made me happy, and all of this is producing good work I’m enjoying doing.
When was the last time you did something that made you happy? Even five minutes’ worth? Forget the Ultimate Expert’s Guaranteed Guide to Career Success, and follow your bliss. Nobody can guarantee your success, but you can guarantee your own happiness. And happy people produce. Producing something to sell means you have a career to worry about.
It smells as gorgeous as it looks.
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