Category: writing process (Page 1 of 16)

Thoughts on The Motern Method

March 15, 2025 / / 2 Comments

I liked it. Well-worth reading and owning.

However, if anyone has spent any time at all reading Heinlein’s Rules or exploring corners of the internet where these Rules are being lived out, a lot of the concepts in The Motern Method will sound familiar.

Which doesn’t mean it’s not worth reading. IT IS.

But it wasn’t particularly revolutionary for me. Parts of it reminded me of Make Art, Make Money: Lessons from Jim Henson on Fueling Your Creative Career. Parts of it reminded me of Ray Bradbury’s long-standing advice on quantity over quality in one’s art-making. And parts of it reminded me of Heinlein’s Rules.

One thing it also reminded me of is my previous desire to be an independent filmmaker. If The Motern Method was anything for me, it was a reminder that I once wanted to make movies and felt like I didn’t have the resources, and that maybe I need to let go of such thinking and try to make a movie no matter the lack of money or equipment.

I’m not saying I’m going to start making independent films. But… maybe?

The other thing I like about the book is that it collects a lot of advice into one place. Sure, there are Heinlein’s Rules and the books and authors I referenced above, but when I need a quick pep talk, The Motern Method is right there, with all the stuff.

For instance, I got a rejection the other day from a short story market. And yeah, yeah, rejections are part of the deal, right? I’ve had many rejections before, so you’d think I’d brush it off and no big thing.

But I was bummed. In a funk.

And that rejection was followed by another rejection (different story, different market). So again, you’d think, “But that’s great! You’ve got two stories out for submission and even with the rejections, all you need to do is send them out to two more magazines and keep going!”

And that’s exactly the right advice, but my brain doesn’t always operate on logic. My brain sometimes spirals into depths of self-doubt and loathing that are like the black pits of Tartarus, just roiling under the surface waiting to bubble up.

I know rejections are part of the gig, and I know all I need to do is send the stories out again. But knowing and believing are two different things.

Enter The Motern Method.

I remembered that Farley had a few chapters on rejections and getting your work out into the world (again, very Heinlein-esque), so I flipped to those pages and started reading.

It was basically a pep talk, and it worked. My brain stopped its death-spiral, and I felt renewed. Getting my work out into the world is what matters. Getting your work out into the world is what matters. Can’t let rejections stop that. Gotta keep going.

Sure, I could have gone online and googled Heinlein’s Rules again, or tracked down similar publishing advice, but having Farley’s book right at hand, its minimalist, indie-punk black and white cover reminding me that artists can work outside the mainstream system, made it easier to read what I needed to read.

I love the book’s aesthetic. No author is mentioned anywhere but on the spine. No introduction, no table of contents. The book just starts, each section indicated by bold-font titles, and then it ends, with Farley narrating his creative journey, explaining how the Motern Method was developed and how it helped him write the book.

Some sections are ones I quibble with a bit. “Read the comments. Read the reviews”? Maybe for others, but for me, this is DEATH. Both good comments and bad, good reviews and bad, tend to hurt my Creative Voice. It doesn’t mean I’m not an idiot who sometimes reads the reviews, but I always hate myself afterward.

Farley’s larger point — that reading the reviews will toughen you up, show you that taste is relative and not to worry if people don’t “get” your work — isn’t a bad one, but I know for my own ego, reviews can get inside like brain worms and infect my process.

But overall, the book is a rallying cry, a manifesto.

And it is very punk. Which I dig.

I’ll be keeping The Motern Method on my writing desk. When I’m stuck, when I’m down, when I need a kick in the pants, it will be my go-to.

A New Spirit

February 25, 2025 / / 0 Comments

It feels like spring here in Michigan. For two days, at least, we’ve had a thaw: snow melting into great running rivulets along the sides of roads, puddles everywhere, blue sky and birdsong. I’ve also started a new notebook, having finished my previous one this past weekend.

Upon starting a new notebook (spiral-bound, flimsy cardboard cover, the kind you can get at any CVS or Kroger), I like to enliven it with a “guardian spirit” on the first page (hat tip: Austin Kleon for the “guardian spirit” concept).

For this new notebook — as February ends and spring begins (eventually) — I want someone who embodies the kind of disposition I’m hoping to cultivate this season. Ice is cracking, snow is melting.

I’ve decided on C.S. Lewis, but not merely because of the obvious allusion to his most famous children’s book about the end of winter.

My children and I just recently finished the audiobook of The Silver Chair (topnotch performance by Jeremy Northam, by the way).

I often can’t decide which Narnia book is my favorite — it’s a three-way tie between Chair, Dawn Treader, and Magician’s Nephew — but since The Silver Chair is freshest in my memory, it’s my favorite for now. It’s the perfect “knightly quest” narrative. Jill and Eustace are sent on a great mission to rescue the king’s son, they have signs and directions to follow that they often bungle, but nevertheless, they continue to seek the fulfillment of the charge placed before them, and in the course of their journey, they face giants, and strange magic, and monsters, and wondrous creatures. Also, there are talking owls. I am a sucker for talking owls.

And Puddleglum. Puddleglum and Reepicheep. Best Narnians by a country mile. Northam’s voice for Puddleglum is perfection.

I also finished John Hendrix’s fantastic graphic novel about Lewis and Tolkien called The Mythmakers (another Kleon recommendation and also utterly topnotch).

At some point in the future I’d like to write a bit more about The Mythmakers because it was completely wonderful, but for now I’ll say that the portrait Hendrix paints of both men made me fall in love with their lives and their journey all over again.

(I say “all over again” because I was already a huge Lewis and Tolkien nerd, but Hendrix’s comic has reinvigorated and reoriented that passion… I’m even thinking of choosing new books for my British Lit class next year due to the ideas Hendrix’s graphic novel ignited.)

Lewis, myths, stories, adventure, the creative process: all of it hits where I’m at right now. I’m not exactly an Oxford don, but as a high school English teacher, I have some affinity for professors like Lewis and Tolkien: teachers who also cared deeply about their work as writers. I’m much more Tolkien-esque in my procrastination and slow production, but I aspire to be more Lewis-ish. I admire prolific artists, and Lewis was decidedly prolific.

He also was a voracious reader and loved many books and genres. I’d like to think that I read a lot, but I also want inspiration to keep reading more (and more widely). I want to reclaim myself as a Reader, capital-R, and even more particularly as a BOOK reader. There are many wonderful blog posts, articles, essays, and sundry on the internet, but I want books. Books to read. Books to spend hours upon hours lost inside. I want to read books the way Bilbo wants to see mountains.

Tolkien was famously (infamously?) critical of Lewis’s habit of throwing everything-and-the-kitchen-sink into his Narnia stories, but I’m much more a Lewis than a Tolkien when it comes to my own storytelling and world-building. Lewis’s fantasy stories are very “Arthurian” in that sense. Everything is up for grabs. The mythos can contain multitudes.

(Anyone familiar with the breadth of Arthurian stories from the Middle Ages and beyond will know that there’s nothing the Arthurian mythos can’t contain, or practically nothing. Lewis, as a medievalist and lover of Arthuriana, was always much more comfortable weaving different traditions and legends together; whereas Tolkien, though also a medievalist, was less enamored of the King Arthur legends and less inclined to the hodgepodgey quality of those stories.)

I can already feel the pull of my library books, and already the desire to take solitary long walks through the countryside, and at last the desire for tea (or beer), good conversation, and the sharing of stories.

Experiments in Applying Butt to Chair

February 14, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Wrote about 740 words in an hour. Handwritten. (Sometimes I handwrite, sometimes I type. Switching back and forth helps jog my Creative Voice. I let it decide which to do at any given moment.)

Not my highest word count in an hour, but I did have a brief stretch in the story where I haggled over word choice and phrasing. I try to not get bogged down in such things, but there are times when I really have a way I want something to sound, and my first few attempts aren’t quite getting the rhythm. So, I try out a few different options: moving words around, switching out phrases, writing sentences, scratching them out, then writing new ones, etc.

I told myself I wasn’t moving from my chair for one hour, and lo and behold, it worked. I sat in my chair for one hour and wrote a decent chunk of words. Now I am writing this blog post, so more words abound.

Today was a day off from teaching, so this one-hour, uninterrupted writing time is a bit of an experiment. I usually rush to write a few hundred words in the morning before work, but this is the first time in several weeks where I’ve had a quiet afternoon (no children at home), and I’ve been able to write. I wanted to see if I had the focus and stamina to sit and write for an hour without interruption, and the answer is yes. I can do it. I can probably take a ten-minute walking break and do it again for another hour. I can foresee myself doing this for three or four hours in a day, if I had such chunks of time. I might even try it later this afternoon, when the kids are home from school, to see if I can do it with a little bit of noise and distraction hovering around.

I can see myself doing this day in and day out. A day spent writing.

I can’t say I’ve cracked “writer’s block” or anything (hahaha, far from it!), but I will say that I’ve gotten better and better at finding strategies and methods to be more focused and confident. A few years ago, sitting and writing for two or three hours sounded good in theory, but I had a terrible time actually doing it. I would jump on the internet for “just a minute” and end up there for hours. I would tell myself to go down to my computer and write, but then a million other things would suddenly become extremely urgent, and I’d do all those other things instead of the one thing I told myself I wanted to do.

A few years ago, I worried that I simply wasn’t cut out to write professionally because I didn’t have the discipline or work ethic to make it happen. When I did have hours upon hours of time on my hands, I squandered it.

Today, in this butt-in-chair experiment, I’ve seen that I AM capable of blocking time for writing, doing the writing, and getting the writing done. And wanting to do more writing. Keeping the chain going.

I definitely need to replicate this experiment many more times before I can confidently say my work ethic has improved, but today was a good start. Today showed me I can do it if I want to.

Typing Offline

January 16, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I really want to get a classroom set of word processing machines for my students to type up their drafts after working in their notebooks. Many of them struggle with writing legibly, and they like the comfort of the spell-check function (I know I do too!).

But I don’t want them accessing the internet, partly because it is distracting and takes them out of flow, but also, more immediately, because some (many?) students have decided to use ChatGPT (and equivalent) to “help” them do their work.

I’m so adamantly opposed to LLM (and other forms of generative “AI”) that I want to remove all temptation and access. If they want to use it in their non-school lives or as adults, I can’t stop them, and whatever, God speed, I guess. But in my classroom, where I value human work and the connection that comes from sharing our written thoughts and stories with others, I want an “AI”-free zone.

Also, I cannot believe more people aren’t talking about the environmental and energy-related issues that come from these AI companies. It’s staggering! All so we can have ChatGPT write fan letters for us? It’s insane. Talk about a solution in need of a problem.

If I was given a fan letter written by some LLM, I would not only be uninterested in it, I would be deeply saddened that someone even thought I would want to read what some language-predictor machine burbled up from its store of (copyright-protected, by the way, and nobody gave it permission to use those) words.

It’s all so meaningless. That’s what saddens me about students turning in “AI”-generated essays and creative writing. It’s a waste of my time. I don’t care about “perfect” grammar or sentences that “sound” good but are devoid of any real meaning or human feeling. I want to know what my students THINK — what THEY think — about their own ideas and experiences.

Of course, what hampers all of this and drives students to use ChatGPT is grading. Once a grade is involved, the pressure is on to get that A, so they will do whatever they need to in order to achieve it. When you try to de-center grading in the classroom, they don’t see the point in trying and don’t do any work. It’s the conundrum of modern schooling. The grade is all that matters; it’s the currency that allows students to get into college, and then once in college, it’s the currency that allows them to graduate and get a job.

Writing, for instance, often has little-to-no importance for students. They don’t see the point other than it’s another hoop to jump through. Sadly, I’ve seen students not even care when the writing piece is something personal or something they’ve chosen to write about. They still don’t see the value.

This is not every student, mind, not by a long shot, but it’s enough to be discouraging. And it’s also enough that it makes me want to get a classroom set of THESE so that students can still type their words, but they must type THEIR words and not the words of some machine.

Anyway, I need about $7000 for a classroom set of twenty. Not sure how to get a grant or donation to pay for that (I’m not even sure the company who makes the word processors has twenty of them waiting around for some random teacher to buy), but it’s a goal for me this year.

I want to emphasize the process of writing, the tactile quality of writing by hand, of communicating through words and pictures, comics, collage, letters written in one’s own hand, doodles, and yes, even typed stuff, but typed stuff that is typed on a keyboard and generated by a human mind and heart.

I want to center our humanity in the classroom this year. Learning is about more — so much more — that getting a grade, getting into college, getting a job. I want to help my students NOT surrender their humanity to a machine.

And I want to hear the clickety-clack of keys typing without any interference from the internet or the corporations who want us all to “embrace” a technology we didn’t ask for. That’s my rant for the new year. Now how can I find seven grand?

“The Writer’s Journey” by Vogler

January 13, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I got this book from the library about a month ago. It’s due back soon, so I thought I’d make an effort to finish it before then.

I was supposed to read Vogler’s book for a screenwriting class way back in my freshman year of undergrad, but I never actually did. I was very much anti-Hero’s Journey at that time. I’m still not quite sure how I feel about the concept even now, but I thought I could use a bit of a refresher in story structure, and despite my ambivalence about the “Hero’s Journey” with a capital H, I’m interested in archetypes and symbols, and Vogler’s book offers some interest on that score. The archetype stuff is very general, but again, I felt like I need a refresher. Sometimes a re-acquaintance with ideas we already know is helpful; we might see something new in studying them again, or we might see how these ideas work differently within our new context.

Since I’m in the midst of writing a noir fantasy novel that’s leaning heavily on certain tropes and types (while at the same time trying to put my own spin on them… the same dance we’re all doing, basically), I’ve enjoyed reading through Vogler’s descriptions of types like the Shadow, the Shapeshifter, and the Trickster. My main character Grettir has been a bit of all three archetypes so far, and I’m curious why that is. What made me craft a hero who is all these other types at various times? What’s happening under the surface in my imagination that I’m trying to explore?

I can definitely see how my other characters might fit into these frameworks too, and already I’m getting ideas for how I might lean into these archetypes a bit more.

What I like about Vogler’s approach is that he doesn’t prescribe how we should use these archetypes or structures. He’s quick to point out ways in which great stories often subvert or subtly shift these elements to fit the story that’s being told. These are frameworks not prescriptions or dictates. I like that element of freedom, recognizing that every story will be shaped by the teller and the needs of the tale.

The other thing I like about the book is a bit towards the end where Vogler compares the artist’s process of writing and creating to the hero’s journey (hence the title: The Writer’s Journey). What are my Shadows? Who are the Tricksters on my journey?

These questions are not simply cute metaphor. At least for me, they enliven the creative process, showing how this journey into imagination and storytelling is a transformative experience for the writer (and hopefully for the reader too). Not that every story needs to be “important.” In fact, it’s not about the finished story at all because that way leads to writer’s block and frustration.

Instead, the “writer’s journey” framework helps me see that what I’m doing isn’t pointless or stupid. No matter how my stories “turn out,” the act of creating them is what’s important. It’s a journey, after all. The emphasis is on the journey itself and not the finished product. It’s about the writer and her transformation as she goes on this journey.

In some ways, this is what I love about telling stories and writing in general. It’s about what it does to ME. Yes, I hope for the audience to have a good time and get something out of it, but that part is out of my control in the grand scheme. I can write to the best of my ability and hope the audience responds, but I can’t make them have a good time. I can only try.

But for myself, the writer, I do have control. By putting words on a page, I am embarking on my own journey. I’m telling myself the story. I get to face the ups and downs of the adventure, both in the tale I’m telling and in my experience of writing that tale. The act of writing is the journey. I will face Shadows and Threshold Guardians, find Mentors and Allies, and ultimately, if I finish the story, I will face the Ordeal of Critical Voice, defeat it, and bring back the Elixir of Life.

(All these terms are covered in Vogler’s book as part of his analysis of the Hero’s Journey, particularly in films; he cribs a lot from Joseph Campbell.)

Anyway, this is what struck me as I read through as much of the book as I could before it had to go on its own journey, back through the return chute at the library.

The Motern Method

January 4, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Book just came in the mail. Haven’t read it yet, but will report back later when I do.

I first heard of The Motern Method and Matt Farley on Austin Kleon’s substack. The whole question of quantity versus quality and how much we should share is something I’ve been interested in for quite some time.

I really, really want to follow Heinlein’s Rules as championed by Dean Wesley Smith, so I’ve tended to lean on the side of “share it all” — or “Put it on the market” in Heinlein’s parlance — which is definitely NOT the attitude of most artists, and which can seem a bit “icky” in the case of someone like Farley, if you think what he’s doing isn’t art. I don’t write stuff in order to game the system or the algorithm or whatever. But then, I also don’t think Farley is just trying to game the system either. He wants to write songs and he wants people to listen to them. Why not write hundreds of poop songs? Nobody said art had to be serious.

If what Farley does is art, then who cares if his songs are silly or designed to get people to click on them?

But if what Farley does isn’t art, then that’s where we might accuse him of cynically manipulating the system.

I kind of think he’s an artist, so I’m kind of okay with his crazy output.

Anyway, I ordered his manifesto, The Motern Method, partly because I’m interested in these quantity/quality debates, and also because I am trying to banish my Critical Voice and embolden my Creative Voice, and Farley’s method seems ideal for such attempts.

I have reading I need to do for work, but The Motern Method is calling me like an algorithmic siren song…

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