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Beckoning, Calling, and "the Next Big Thing" |
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Written by Elizabeth Genco
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Tuesday, 06 September 2005 |
That spread on the table looks inviting, but what are you really hungry for? Scryptic Studios welcomes back Elizabeth Genco, as she explores the art of discrimination.
I've had wolves on the brain lately, so I've been reading up on the subject. You're all writers, you know how it is -- just gotta follow your nose, right? Right. So I'm reading WOMEN WHO RUN WITH THE WOLVES (stay with me here, it's not that kind of column), and this bit strikes a chord:
The way to maintain one's connection to the wild is to ask oneself what it is that you want. This is the sorting of the seed from the dirt. One of the most important discriminations we can make in this matter is the difference between things that beckon to us and things that call from our souls.
(Food for thought on writing appears in the oddest places.)
When something catches your attention, you should just follow it, right? It sure is tempting. But understand: your attention is a powerful thing. And it is a discrete, limited commodity. You only have so much of it. Sucks, but them's the facts. Here's another pesky fact: how you choose to focus your attention has a direct bearing on how much you achieve. If you want to make the most out of your limited resources, knowing the difference between calling and beckoning is crucial.
(Learned that one from experience, folks.)
Here's one thing we all know: getting your stuff out there is hard. Breaking the ceiling of the writer's market's is well-nigh "impossible," and everyone knows it. Right? I don't buy that, and never have, but if you do, I have a suggestion: start looking into available markets. Mine are comics and prose, and let me tell you, you don't really have to spend a lot of time perusing markets to figure out that there are a lot of choices available to you. I've been keeping track of markets for a while now, and I'm amazed at the possibilities, despite what many contend to be the shrinking of the marketplace. I haven't been doing this for very long, admittedly, so maybe the market is shrinking. But, really, who cares? The point is, there are options open to industrious writers. Yes, it's hard -- anything that's worth doing is hard. But there are plenty of options. Too many options. So many that, unless you make some decisions, you'll get lost in the vast sea of options. My partner Leland calls this "options poisoning."
"Options poisoning" is my personal Achilles' heel. Despite all that's bleak and grim around us, I have a healthy interest in the world. Everything looks good. So I put a little bit of everything on my plate, and suddenly, it's stacked so high that I don’t even know what's there anymore (I'll give you three guesses as to how much of it gets eaten in the end). Meanwhile, time's a-wastin'. Nothing is more demoralizing at this stage of the game for me than waking up after six months, only to realize that I've accomplished nothing.
Luckily, getting out of the beckoned by the options scenario is easy -- all it requires is a little self-examination, a little planning, and the courage to stay the course.
Take a good, hard look at what interests you, and what you have to say. Forget what beckons. Beckonings are a dime a dozen. What calls you? What gets you out of bed in the middle of the night to write something down? For some folks, this is a no-brainer -- they just do what they do. Your material is something that, over time, will work itself out. In the beginning, however, the choices can seem overwhelming. Six new small publishers may have calls for open submissions, but are you really interested in writing the stuff that they're looking for? If your main objective is to write graphic novels starring your gum smacking, sword-wielding canary (who fights crime!), then, well… I humbly posit that your time might be better spent doing that.
That's not to say that you should never try anything new, of course -- it's how boundaries get pushed and discoveries get made. But no matter what you do with your days (day job, no day job, in the pokey, free as a bird), you only have a certain amount of time for creative work. Choosing how to spend that time in ways that will provide the most payback is just as important as making that time in the first place.
The fun part of plan-making is that the specifics are totally up to you. I know of a guy who writes a short story a week -- in all sorts of genres -- and while I'm not 100% sure, I believe he makes a living as a short-story writer (yeah, there are no markets out there -- right). The discipline of writing a story a week and the countless submissions are the hallmarks of his plan. The details of your plan will be personal to you -- ideally, they'll all get back to what calls you. You can change your plan later -- in fact, going over it at regular intervals isn't a bad idea. Having a plan -- any plan, as long as it works for you -- is what's going to help you evaluate how you choose to spend your time. You simply can't do it all.
Ah, but, plan or no plan, the beckoning continues. That's where what I call "fiercely guarding your energy" comes in. I'm sure you've heard lots of folks talk about "making the time" to write. "Turn off the TV! Butt in the chair!" To that, I say: if only TV and video games were the real time sucks. That's the easy stuff. If you really and truly love writing, you might find, as I do, that shiny new projects are infinitely more tempting than three hours spent in front of the boob tube -- or (more importantly) the current project. Have you ever found yourself beckoned by a brand new thing right around the time that your current thing gets really hard? That, my friends, is an anesthetic. It's like an impulse purchase. So full of promise, so free of screw-ups… it'll solve all your problems. Until you start the new project of your dreams, the going gets tough, and you push it aside for the next "next big thing."
All the same, those new project ideas are possibilities, and possibilities are good. So keep track of them. Come up with a system of organizing those new ideas that come to you. Being an old skool UNIX geek, I have "queues" (really just folders and plain text files) where the new ideas go. There's a queue for comic series ideas, a queue for comics shorts, a queue for prose shorts, and a queue for novels. It's somewhat primitive, but it gets the job done. When the brilliant idea beckons, I just put it in the queue. Then I can evaluate it -- after I've finished what I'm working on.
Who knows? Maybe one of the three new ideas that came to me in the course of writing this column will be my "next big thing." For now, they'll go into the queue, where they can keep calling if they're so inclined.
Elizabeth Genco is furiously preparing for SPX.
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