Tag Archives: Writing Process

The Inspiration of Cupcakes

As I write this, we are nearing the end of the Holiday break. Schools resume in a few days, and as our kiddos return to school, so must we return to the lives of responsible adults. The vacation has been life-giving…space to breathe, if you will. I feel as though the time period between back-to-school through Christmas sees a steady increase in activity that eventually reaches an unworkably frenetic pace, which then drops precipitously after the holidays. I look forward to that drop. The first few days of vacation were spent recovering from exhaustion. Youth is wasted on the young.

Earlier this week, our youngest kiddo spontaneously decided to bake. Like her sister, she has this creative drive that just doesn’t end, and, as her capabilities increase, its fascinating to watch. The result was cupcakes with home-made icing that tasted amazing. This particular kiddo always has a project going on. In the couple of days prior, she had started a scrap-booking project, researched tigers extensively, and created a ferris wheel from aquabeads. She’s always wanting to try something new, and always coming out with an amazing finished product. I have a framed drawing from her in my office as one of the best Christmas gifts of the year.

I envy her that drive.

I’ve had time to write over the vacation, but have yet to do so, not even a post in this space, which I have greatly neglected. I think that it’s because I feel like I need to have a full and complete idea organized in my head before I start typing any words, when really, I need to just start typing. I have this unhealthy dose of artistic angst that haunts me, telling me that I can’t let the words flow as I once did due to too many other obligations, not because of the time involvement, but because of the brain drain of everything else. When I take a few minutes to remember, though, I wrote in a previous career after my 9-5. When I was in grad school, I remember writing a scene of a play while I was waiting in line at the car wash.

There’s something to be said for positivity, for the feeling of optimism that leads to an almost disinhibited drive to get things done. I feel like that’s the most difficult thing with which to wrestle as an adult, the most stubborn obstacle to overcome when it comes to writing. There’s a feeling that I won’t be able to write anything worthwhile even if I try, because I have too many other pressures and life things taking up space in my head.

And yet, when I get these things out of my head and onto paper or onto the screen, there’s a feeling of relief and clarity, because keeping the ideas and characters and thoughts in my head is just not healthy.

So, while I didn’t do badly on my new year’s resolutions for 2025, I’m paring back for 2026 to this single resolution: I’m going to adopt the disinhibition of optimism, and see where it leads.

Because I was inspired by cupcakes.

Happy Holidays!

The Writing (Re-) Process

I’m oversimplifying a bit perhaps, but I see two general schools of thought regarding how to be creative and make a living.

And I’m reminded of the poet (whom I can’t remember) who said that the only thing worse than having a job is not having a job.

I can only speak for those of us who write, but I imagine its the same for anyone with a creative bent. I used to complain a lot. The reason was that I worked in a profession that didn’t permit a great deal of creativity. It was also a profession that was better suited to extroverts (I’m very much the introvert by nature). I came home quite exhausted at the end of the day, and it was all I could do to force myself to put down any words somewhere between dinner and bedtime. One of the reasons for my career change, I reasoned, was to allow more creativity into my day-to-day so that I would be more creative in my free time to write.

Now, I am essentially a creative problem solver Monday through Friday. I write the code that makes things on the web work. The issue is that the technologies with which I work require a great deal of time to remain current in one’s knowledge as they’re always evolving, and thus I do the same work a lot in my free time, as well. I know, you’re thinking “all work and no play.” Sometimes, though, the work is the play.

That creates its own set of problems. How does one know when to stop working, to take time off? How does one switch gears between the creativity that is work and the creativity that is play? In my case, when do I stop writing code and start writing fiction?

In retrospect, I was very wrong to complain back then. Being able to think outside the box and solve problems creatively each day is great, especially when I get to do it in the context of something as socially, politically, and interpersonally transformative as the Internet. Sometimes, though, when I have free time at home and want to get the latest short story idea out of my head and onto “paper,” I find myself with a very different problem: my creative juices are tapped, the muscles sore from being put to good use all day.

So, all that to say that each day job held and holds its own challenges. Both make me just as tired, but in different ways. The moral to my brief account, if there is one, is to not complain about one’s circumstances, because, as Karen would be quick to point out to me, the grass isn’t always greener.

And, while I’m not complaining at all about my current field of grass, the other moral to this story is that writing (as well as any other medium, I’m certain) takes just as much discipline now. I have to be intentional about making the time, intentional about practicing the discipline. That intentionality is key, and my impulse to think that the need for it would be offset by a new career was very misguided.

Anything creative is work. Hard work.

Here’s to those doing the work.

Re-Living Adventures

Running with the theme of letting the imagination run with ideas, I remember something that an old friend once told me. I was frustrated then with having little time to write (ironically, I think back to that period now and wish I had that much time….funny how everything is relative that way), and found what little creative spark I could find squashed by my day job. That was before I had been able to find the interdisciplinary melding points in what I did, and I was looking for some way to let everything fall into place.

His advice to me was to let everything be “grist for the writing mill.”

It was difficult to take his advice then, but in the years since, I’ve began to appreciate his wisdom. One of my resolutions for the new year (or was it the year before…?) was to make time to work on some side projects, projects for which I had good ideas but have never set aside to time to truly develop. Those sorts of projects, I think, are the best sometimes for getting the writing spark lit. As Karen and I have had some quite interesting experiences with living arrangements over the past year, I remembered a shelved project that has been sitting on my desktop for a bit. It’s a collection of humorous experiences that we’ve had at different apartments since we’ve been married. It’s one of those projects for which I’ll very likely never seek publication, but that’s worth compiling if only for a family memoir of sorts to be a source of good memories later.

Or, perhaps the adventures that I recount there will end up on these virtual pages. Who knows?

I think that I’ll carve out some time in the next week sometime to outline some of our experiences and begin writing them down. It will get me back in the frame of mind in which words are flowing out onto the page, at least, and that can lead to all sorts of wonderful things.

Sonic Screwdrivers and Green Monsters

Sonic Screwdriver, a piece of Dr. Who Memorabilia
Karen gave me a sonic screwdriver for my birthday.
That was a couple of months ago, and I’ve been carrying it around zapping things that won’t work ever since. When I have an obsessive compulsive issue and begin worrying that the door isn’t locked securely, I’ll use the sonic screwdriver, because everyone knows that when the Doctor fuses a lock with that gadget, it stays locked.During the move, Karen shook her head at one point and referred to it as my security blanket.

Don’t judge.
This isn’t a reality distortion field, it’s just letting my imagination run a bit. It’s healthy, I think, letting yourself engage in the “what if” sorts of fantasizing that leads to good storytelling.
Over the weekend, I drove by a dark green Hummer that was parked on the curb. In true Bostonian fashion, the license plate indicated that it was a “Green Monstah.” I glanced at it in my rearview as I drove by, and pretended that I could hear it rumbling, the monster beneath pawing the ground to be let out and wreak its havoc at its master’s bidding. Or, perhaps it was a Decepticon-like evil transforming robot that would morph into its true shape to leave collateral damage in its wake as it carried out the mission known only to itself.
As I said, I don’t permit myself to become absorbed in these fantasies at the expense of reality. I will let myself dwell on them when I have some downtime, or when I’m laying in bed trying to fall asleep. This is the stuff from which good writing is born.
What I don’t do is let myself run with it enough. Part of that is a timing thing, but part of it is that I tend to get so bogged down in the tedium of finishing a project that I’m stalled on (like my novel), that I get stubborn and won’t let myself take a break to write other things. The truth is that letting those creative impulses flow uninhibited for even a little while flexes the creative muscles. Just writing this stuff down, without structure or a plan, just to see where it could go, is an excellent exercise, and could turn into an excellent story in its own right at some point in the future.
Being observant of what’s around us is part of what makes a writer a writer (or, for that matter, makes an actor an actor). Letting yourself do something with what you observe, though…that’s where the discipline comes into play, and its that discipline that I’m hoping to cultivate in the coming months.

More Publishing Details!

I had promised some more availability details for my short story, “Diaspora,” which was recently published in eSciFi Magazine. While previously available only at Barnes and Noble, the issue is now available at the magazine’s website in a variety of formats, including Kindle and Nook and even good old fashioned PDF. It’s also available directly from Amazon, as well. I’d love to hear what you think of the story!

Update in 2019: The magazine, sadly, is no longer in publication, so I’ve taken down the links.