DIY and the Cult of Doing

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advice, american dream, art, buying, creativity, doing, guides, making, selling, writing

If I’ve learned anything in the past year, it’s that people will pay for anything that makes them feel more productive, powerful, capable, or valuable. They will also eat up any content that is critical of a product or celebrity or gives them advice they think they need. This is why people will stand in line and spend $6 on a cup of Starbucks, but will steal your $2.99 romance ebook, stream a movie over a torrent site full of viruses, and Spotify their favorite artists. The coffee makes them feel like they are going to accomplish something because it’s COFFEE (well, mostly milk and sugar, but still, it claims to be coffee).

We value productivity so much in the US that I could likely sell a hundred copies of a 30-page guide to inbox-zero faster than half that many copies of a 300-page novel, even if they were priced the same.

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Dial tone

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alone, community, disconnected, genre, mental illness, reading, tribe, writing

I’ve been in a bit of a daze lately. I’ve been feeling disconnected from the rest of the world for a while now and so often when I try to reach out, to find some common ground, I find the earth’s been salted by screeds of hate or the hands on the other side would rather push me back into the darkness. Or that there’s nothing out there that sees me enough to even push back.

I walk around in life alternately invisible to the point that people run into me with carts, skip past me in lines, stare through me and like piece of meat hung out for dogs. Drivers are either honking and licking their car windows at me or their cutting me off and merging into me because they don’t know I exist.

Kickstarter and the Club of Self-Righteousness

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art, funding, kicstarter, life, opinions, thoughts, writing

I’ve been pondering Kickstarter a lot lately. Ran all the numbers and everything. Let them sit.

Because Kickstarter is highly controversial these days and I just don’t feel mentally strong enough to deal with the backlash, with the snark, with being hated anymore than I already feel like I generally am.

NaNoWriMo Tools

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digital, dixon toconderoga, fountain pens, gel pens, jetpens, lamy, multi-pens, multipens, nanowrimo, office supply, pencil, pens, pentel, pilot, planner, planner addict, platinum, scrivener, stationary, stationery, storage, tips, tokyopenshop, tools, word, writing, zebra

About a year ago, I wrote up a list of tools as options for NaNoWriMo participants. Pretty much all of it’s still valid (though Microsoft has named OneDrive “SkyDrive” on parts of my laptop and I have to say I’m not thrilled with dealing with their identity crisis when looking for documents, so I generally just use Google Drive).

If you want the full breakdown, it’s over here on the Fort Writerdale site.

The “paper” tools section is here.

It occurs to me that I never wrote about my favorite pens so let’s remedy that real quick. (Yes, real quick. Don’t make me break out any of the worse phrases I picked up in the South.)

Ballpoint:

Davis Groves and the changing world

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davis groves, delinquency, juveniles, la county, messed up world, policy changes, Protect, protectors, sex worker, trigger warning, youth

Most of you probably have no idea who Davis Groves is — unless you miraculously remember her from a story in Needle magazine back in 2013, from a story on Beat to a Pulp later that year, Noir Nation from last year, or maybe Feeding Kate, back in 2012 (damn, time flies). I’m assuming even if you have a copy of the new Protectors anthology, you haven’t gotten far enough to find the Davis story in there because Thomas Pluck has utterly outdone himself and not only does that include stories from writers even my nonreader friends have heard of, I understand the print copy rivals phone books in size (Amazon says the print size is over 700 pages). (And if you don’t have a copy of the Protectors 2: Heroes, I don’t know what you’re waiting for unless you’re as broke as I usually am. Maybe ask for it as a gift? It benefits Protect, an organization that aims to prevent abuse of children so even if you only like one story in it, it’s still worth the price.)

The Power of Positive Thinking or Don’t Buy Lies

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art, coaching, crafters, crafting, creatives, diy, doing, entrepreneurs, life, living, magical thinking, making, positive thoughts, selling, writers, writing

Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, even Twitter are full of “positive thinking” quotes and hand-lettered sayings and all sorts of “You Can Do It” if you “Keep Calm and” “Think Positive.” There’s lot’s of pictures of coffee mugs with perfectly angled planners and glasses you know no one wears, maybe some glitter or pink flowers on a unbelievably white desk. (Seriously, who the hell has room on their desk for bud vases and what kind of “designer” can keep a desk pristine white without spilling coffee or ink or the leaky bits of yesterday’s lunch on it?)

These people are the opposite of “writers” though there’s some overlap, generally in the self-help genre. Most of the writers I know are surly, cynical, and will tell anyone who listens that there’s no money in writing, no money in publishing, that you’re going to need to keep your day job forever yet still probably die of a disease basic insurance could have cured, and that “writers write” everyday whether they want to or not, generally at the ass crack of dawn before going to the day job or in the middle of the night after tucking in all the children. They’re regularly drunk, over-caffeinated, under-medicated, bleary-eyed, and tend to wear their dysfunction like a badge of honor. They march around under a banner of “This Sucks and We Do It Because We Think We Have To or Maybe We Want To, We Don’t Know, But It Definitely Sucks.”

When Outlining Gets Out of Control

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advice, damn lies, etc., lies, outlining, pantsing, planning, plotting, writing

I’m not much for outlining. I try. I understand the concept. Except, then I write and everything goes off the rails. I write the end first, part of a prequel, thirty pages of backstory, and then the thing I outlined except with a different plot glued together from three other stories I wrote when this process happened on another project. The story, “Hollow” that appeared on Beat to a Pulp a few years back was a hybrid of three random scenes that came together after reading a magazine article and after two other plots fell out and got together to form their own thing — then those other two set a building on fire and haven’t been seen since, but I’m sure they’ll reappear at some point. The always do.

Writing…and junk

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blog posts, books, drugs, having nothing to say, health, movies, tv, writing

A lot of writers blog about writing. Often. I have no idea how they find that many things to say, but I’ve noticed most of it falls into a few categories:

Writing advice. I don’t have any. I don’t know what I’m doing. I can’t help you. Besides, most of this seems to be either highly subjective, old (as in, “this worked for me ten years ago so if it doesn’t work for you, it’s because you suck), or judgmental (self-pub sucks, traditional is for tools, Nanowrimo is for losers, etc. You know what? Do whatever works for you. You have the ability to churn out whatever formula makes you rich, go for it. You want to write your thoughts on the smell of cupcakes? Have fun. Whatever. Again, I don’t know what I’m doing. I can’t help you. (Just don’t let other people boss you around. They’re probably guessing, too.)

Protectors 2 is in the wild

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alex segura, anthology, books, charity, children, hilary davidson, joe r. lansdale, joelle charbonneau, laura k curtis, Protect, thomas pluck, writers

The new Protectors anthology (benefiting PROTECT) is out today.

Miami Pen Show

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fountain pens, ink, miami, pen show, pens, stationery

I may have had a few moments while trying to figure out parking in Dadeland where I’d wished A) I’d taken the train, B) I’d driven my Jeep instead of the husband’s truck, and C) that I’d stayed home. I have a love-hate relationship with Miami and its fun lack of parking and terrible drivers. That said, let’s head in the Marriott. (I also can’t recall a good experience with a Marriott, but then, I like boutique hotels, clown motels, and camping.)

Here’s the thing, I’ve been obsessed with pens and paper and stationery and art and office supplies since I was small. Like, as a kid I went to the office supply aisle in department stores the way other kids ran for the toys. I got a desk-style tape dispenser when I turned 16. This is back before you could get one anywhere and we lived in a fairly small town, so the options were pretty much order it through work or go to the specialty shop one town over.