Creativity and Mental health

For many years now, I have wanted to take steps towards starting creative writing.

I used to love being creative when I was younger and would create whole worlds and scenarios and play them out.

I find nowadays it’s a lot harder to do. Almost insurmountably so some times. Where do I get ideas? Is the idea too close to something already out there? Am I just copying someone else’s idea? Why can’t I come up with anything original. The list of issues and problems going around my head seems never ending.

I’ve not made a secret that officially for the last 16 years, and unofficially for quite some time prior to that, I’ve lived and suffered with depression and social anxiety.

I also chose an initial career path with logic and formality where key. Not much room for imagination when trying to code software is there?

In a lot of ways, I feel like I’ve trained myself out of being creative.

The thing is, I think my creative side is still very much present and trying to break free (so to speak).

I larp, I paint, I roleplay. I can come up with weird little things on the fly.

So I think the spark is there. But it feels like it’s guttering and struggling to stay alight.

My depression and ‘brain weasels’ don’t help.

At times, everything I try doesn’t seem good enough or ‘right’.

Though it begs the question What is right? What is wrong? Especially in the creative sphere.

I seem to need to have everything perfect and have that confirmed by multiple parties.

But you know what?

I’m trying.

And that’s what counts I think. It may take a thousand more steps for each little thing, but even a tiny victory is a tiny victory.

Even if I am battling against myself.

It’s the end of the world as we know it….

Yes, yes it’s been a while. I know. Never mind.

 

Recently, I’ve been thinking along the line of Sci-Fi. In particular the sort of scenario is:

 

Mankind has started tentatively expanding out into the solar system. An impending extinction (or near extinction) level event forces the timescale, meaning there are a limited number of habitats/stations (O’neal cylinder type things) available – say enough for 5 million people total.

So. You have space for 5 million people out of the entire human population. How would you choose who gets to go and who doesn’t. How would you avoid what I think seems to be a nearly inevitable authoritarian regime developing in the habitats afterwards. And what if the extinction event wasn’t so bad – what would the survivors on Earth do afterwards to pick up the pieces and how would they view those that left – conversely how would those that left view the survivors.

It raises some interesting questions around human nature.

For example – in the “selection” stage assuming political, religious, sexual etc outlooks very similar to today I could picture the following sort of well… criteria I suppose.

Disclaimer: THIS IN NO WAY REFLECTS MY OWN VIEWS – This is purely speculative

So.. with that out of the way I could see the following criteria for a “western world” selection for what is essentially a new “Ark”

• No genetic conditions or diseases or recessive carriers of same
• No “below average” IQ’s
• No learning difficulties
• No mental or physical disabilities(1)
• No Sterile/Impotent people(2)
• No Criminal records (3)

There are also more that could be extremely poorly viewed around sexuality and religious leanings as well, plus I reckon it would almost invariably become corrupted with people being bribed(4) and quite possibly end up as what is considered the “Elite” of society, despite the fact that it would likely then no include enough technicians, engineers, medical, teaching, labour, workers etc.

It could all be handwaved away, with skipping over it all with a bit of “They all lived happily ever after” in the habitats and fast-forwarding along to where a robust, functional society has evolved in the habitats, but honestly I can’t really see it happening smoothly or even easily.

After all. Can you imagine the chaos if the news got into the general population that there were only so many places available and the elite were the ones going – whether this was true or not hoo-boy…….. I can see societies ripping themselves apart over it…. Possibly to the point of self-destruction.

Could be an interesting mine of ideas. But at the same time – I’m not entirely sure I’d be comfortable writing about it. Though it could be the basis for an interesting background, especially if the extinction level event didn’t happen as badly as predicted – Maybe the planet killer asteroid’s course was misplotted and it misses or something along those lines. How would various societies rebuild themselves?

 

Food for thought certainly.

TTFN

Ady

 

 

 

 

1. Yes, I realise the irony of this one when you consider such people as Prof. Stephen Hawkins
2. If you’re looking to the future of the human race you’re going to need to think about well… breeding stock…
3. Already proven that you can’t live within the “Social Contract” of society
4. Though really…. What use would money be unless a similar economy is setup up on the habitats/arks

Decisions & deadlines

I made a decision today(1) and a kick in the butt for my writing.

I find I work better with deadlines – I was one of those kids at school that would do very little until almost the last minute then slam something out. Not always the best way to do it(2) but it’s how I was back then.

Nowadays I kind of acknowledge I need a deadline and generally work before there are only a few days are left. I’ve been working on upgraded costume parts for my Ghostbusters outfit in time for “The Love of Sci Fi” in December, I’m starting to work on things for the Larp I’m helping run in March(3) and so I figured I needed a deadline for writing something substantial, otherwise I would probably procrastinate the time away.

It all started with a mail I received about Angry Robot books open door submission window. This opened yesterday and runs until December 31st 2017

2 months to write a novel from bare bone background information I hear you say(4).

Nope. Even I know that in my most hyper-caffeinated, sleep deprived, sugar hyped(5) state I wouldn’t be able to manage that(6).

I’m setting myself the goal of having something that I can submit for NEXT years open submission window.

Which gives me between 364 days and 424 days to get something done.

I’m sticking a countdown up in the sidebar for the (probable) close date of the 2018 submission window.

Here we go.

Ttfn

Ady

---

1. No. Not whether the underwear goes on the outside or not. Apparently that’s not an option.
2. 72 hours or so straight awake working on my final project back in college would suggest it was never my wisest choices.
3. Last year thanks to a combination of factors we had a grand total of 2 months to get everything together for the last game we ran…. Managed it, but it wasn’t exactly fun towards the end.
4. I know your there. I can hear your breathing.
5. For those that know – kinda how I end up on a lot of Larp events/games
6. And the day job might get a bit grumpy if I didn’t show up for two months

World building versus Winging it.

A lot of my writing time at the moment is focused on world building for the sci-fi setting I’m working on for my stories.

The world/setting information will likely end up being far longer than anything I’m likely to write based on it (1), but then the question that comes to mind is “Why?”(2)

Mostly for consistency.

And oddly, some inspiration.

Knowing how I want the Faster than light travel to work (3) – basing it on some extrapolated real-world physics, and frankly a little bit of the Space-fold drives from Macross(4) throws up a few ideas for incidents.

Oddly, also putting some thought into how the spacesuits work has also added a few potential complications…. For example, if the suits have nanotech filters for breathing gas and umm… bodily waste….. in case the wearers finds themselves adrift in space… what would happen if they forgot a catheter? (5)

These are just little bits that pop up as I’m typing out ideas, even before I’ve started putting serious thought into them.

Yes, I could go ahead and start working on stories with only the barest of setting information and add more detail as I go(6) and no doubt I will get to a point where I’m happy enough to start working on stories, and add more/change more as I go and incidents happen. But for now, I’m happy world building, I think it’s just how I’m wired.

Winging it is something I’m not always that great with – yet at the same time I know once I’ve got the setting details down, I can wing it and come up with a fair amount of stuff almost on the fly. (7)

But not yet.

What are your thoughts on world building versus winging it?

TTFN

Ady

---

1. I’m always a little curious on how big the setting information is for something like Frank Herbert’s “Dune” series
2. And occasionally, “Who are you?” “How did you get in here?” and “Please stop doing that to me”
3. Other than “They go real fast”
4. Because it’s Macross, and I’ve loved that series for *ahem* years now…. and Dammit…. checking the link reminded me I still need to find a Sub or Dub version of Macross Delta on DVD…
5. Thank one of our cats for THAT particular mental image….. He’s had a catheter in for the last week 🙂
6. I’m sure that’s how Sir Terry Pratchett did it – starting with the basic ideas and building from there… if you’ve read the series you’ll know the levels of detail by the end. Unfortunately, I’ll never be able to ask him now.
7. I know the Warhammer 40k background damn well and can come up with bits for that quite easily, but at the same time I don’t feel much like writing fiction based in that universe – at least, not at the moment.

Chapter titles – an exercise

So I’ve tried a new writing exercise today.

Nope…. not this…..

 

Rather it was from “Now Write! Science fiction, Fantasy and Horror”  in the section by Diego Valenzuela.

In a nutshell it was to place your music library on shuffle (assuming that your in the modern era and have it on your PC/Ipod/whatever) and write the title of each song that comes along as a chapter title – missing out some that really, really don’t work (1)

What you end up with is a list of chapter titles, that may initially look random as balls, BUT with a bit of extrapolating of ideas based on the titles could give you the basis of an interesting plot.

The list I came up with?

• Chapter 1 Spiritwalker
• Chapter 2 Six feet under
• Chapter 3 Reich Mir die Hand
• Chapter 4 Arising hero
• Chapter 5 Ready to Go
• Chapter 6 Cry Little Sister
• Chapter 7 Tower of Strength
• Chapter 8 This Corrosion
• Chapter 9 At the End of it all
• Chapter 10 Futile
• Chapter 11 The Lost Children
• Chapter 12 Sent to Destroy
• Chapter 13 All the Small things
• Chapter 14 The Kill
• Chapter 15 Scarred
• Chapter 16 Adrenaline
• Chapter 17 Today we are Demons
• Chapter 18 Ritual Noise
• Chapter 19 All Pain is gone
• Chapter 20 Wasteland
• Chapter 21 Deliverance
• Chapter 22 Psychocult
• Chapter 23 the thing that should not be
• Chapter 24 Can I play with Madness
• Chapter 25 Battery
• Chapter 26 New form of silence
• Chapter 27 The Oxidising Angel
• Chapter 28 Kill on Command
• Chapter 29 Get out of my head
• Chapter 30 No Afterparty

Already It’s poking ideas of a dark/supernatural/horror story (2)

Might have to take it further one day

 

---

1. Pong and  Super Space invaders by Eisenfunk were two examples I skipped 🙂 )
2. Not sure what this says about my playlist in honesty

 

Umm.. hello… again…..

Wow… 4 years. Thats a lot of tumbleweeds(1) to clean out..

Where have I been?

Mostly not in a good place. Mental health problems combined with (in hindsight) medication that wasn’t doing its job and a fair few other factors has basically made it all a mess so I basically withdrew from just about everything while we effectively rebuilt(3)

Anyhow.

Over the past few years I’ve started cosplay now, and we have moved to a different larp system & faction (4). Add in purchasing a(5) 3D printer, I’ve been slowly working on getting my creativity levels back up

Cosplay-wise, I’ve also admitted to myself one of my big fandoms – I’ve got a beautiful photo from Bottletop photography of the first outing at last year’s local comic-con

 

The overall result of this, plus the lull in the Larp season for winter is basically why I’m coming back to working on my writing again.

So there we are. I’m not saying I’ll post loads of stuff, but the idea is the blog gives me a bit of a kick for writing.

 

Ttfn

Ady

 

---

1. Finding an image for this google gave me this link I have to admit, that reading the first couple of lines that google showed I was half expecting a horror movie(2)
2. Well.. B movie along the lines of Attack of the killer tomatoes
3. So,, if you haven;t had any experience of mental health problems this won’t make much sense. Tough. 🙂
4. These Guys. Being “evil” rocks 🙂
5. Well 2 as so many plans 🙂

NaNoWriMo: Why I won’t take part.

naNOwrimo for me

This year, I’ve kept popping into the NaNoWriMo forums to see how people were going, and to see what the general atmosphere was.

It’s been the first year I’ve actually paid any sort of attention to it, and the first time I’ve put any thought into whether or not I’m likely to take part next year.

After all, 50,000 words or as it’s billed “A novel in a month”. Quite an achievement I’d say[1]

That was, until I spent some time on the boards.

People melting down because they weren’t ‘on target’; had written themselves in a corner; having to start again as it wasn’t as good an idea as first thought or a load of similar reasons.

Towards the end, there were people saying ‘I’ve not used the delete key at all, so I’ve got typos and plot threads hanging all over the place. That’s how I’ve got my word count up’. My personal favourite: “Every so often I’ll just key whatever’s in my head into the manuscripts, stream of consciousness fashion and it usually is nothing to do with it. I’m leaving it in however so that I can include it in my word count.”

I ask these people, especially the ones that artificially boosted the word count to hit the ‘target’: Why. Can you look yourself in the eye and say: “I did it”; or more likely, are you looking at yourself and saying “I didn’t do it, but I found a work around so it looks like I did. I didn’t hit the target so I didn’t succeed at writing.”

Really? REALLY?

In my opinion, word count is not an indicator of story[2] Word count should not dictate the story. The story should come first, whether it needs 2,000; 20,000 or a 200,000 epic. Of course, if you’re writing to a commercial deadline/contract you usually have an idea of the page count/word count required, but then once the story is out, you can then look at additional scenes/plotlines to explore or ones that it could live without to get towards what the publisher is asking for.

I’ve seen the arguments that NaNoWriMo is about pushing you to set and meet a target. 250 words a day is a target, and one that I so far have managed to hit quite well[6] Eventually, I may increase my daily target, or turn it into a weekly target[8] as then I can work more on Fridays and the weekend when I’m not at work to hit it. I didn’t need anything external to decide this. I did find that I’m not the only one however.

I’m also not a competitive person[9], and NaNoWriMo feels to me to be encouraging competitiveness (you get a certificate if you ’win’) between writers, rather than supporting each other generally.

The other thing weighing against NaNoWriMo for me is simple; November see’s both my wedding anniversary, and my birthday, so wrapping myself into NaNowriMo would mean sequestering myself away in the man-cave for most of the month[10] and missing both of those. That’d go down really well….

So yeah, I’m not going to take part in NaNoWriMo.

1. It’s not a novel, it’s a first draft. Lot of difference…
2. Look at Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings – MASSIVE word count, fairly straightforward story (Summed up perfectly in Clerks 2) with a LOT of padding[3] On the flipside of this, Harry Turtledove’s[4] Southern Victory series – Massive word count per book, but the way it’s written gives  quite a tight, detailed and rich story, and that’s just per book. I’ve got the paperbacks of all bar How Few Remain and they take up about 3-4 feet of bookshelf.
3. I tend to skip a lot of Lord of the Rings when I read it, especially the Elven poetry and overly bombastic descriptions.
4. This man is insanely productive with his writing, there are times where I’d love to meet him to learn, and others when I’d love to meet him to break his fingers[5]
5. Usually when I’m having a none productive writing session and the little jealous monster is coming out.
6. Well, apart from Monday night[ when Heather gave me an early xmas present of the Transformers video game.[7] But then, that’s why the target is for 250 words/day 6 days a week
7. Because Giant Transforming Robots. That’s why.
8. Which is effectively 1,500 words per week at the moment
9. Take a look at my other blog for more about that
10. I guarantee I’d come out of it at the start of December looking like Gollum, blinking in the daylight, going “Was I supposed to be going to work this month? So that’s why the phone kept ringing!”

Targets

So, as a birthday present to myself this year, I’ve set myself a daily writing target.

250 words a day. 6 days a week.

It doesn’t sound like much I know, but I set it based on a few things:

• I’m working full time 37.5 hours/week. So, realistically I can guarantee myself about an hour a day on each workday.

• I’m very much finding my feet with my writing, so I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself to produce say 1,000 words/day [1] so I’ve gone for a lower target.

• I can always increase the target number as I get more comfortable with my writing.

Overall, I figure it’s a reasonable balance between having a life, and writing.

Since setting myself this target, the has only been 1 day I didn’t write 250 words – this is because I was editing sprawl run. According to my daily goal counter in FocusWriter [2] I managed -2.4% of my 250 word daily target – in reality it mean I’d removed 6 more words during the edit than I had replaced.

So yeah, I’ve got a target. It’s small[3] but something I’m confident I can hit and just that little ego boost from knowing you’ve hit a target everyday is something. Plus it’s enough to get going – last night for example, while outlining project-x15[4] and setting project js-1[5] according to the counter I’d hit something around 467% of my goal. That’s about 1200 words in about an hour of actual writing.

Something I feel proud about[6]

1. Too many days of not hitting a target would not help me feel good about it
2. A rather handy bit of software, designed to provide a distraction free writing environment
3. But it’s better than ‘whatever’ for me
4. Better known (currently) as “The Torture Room” – A horror story with psycho-cannibals. And apparently according to Mike, following a brief character description: Al Murray, cannibal pub landlord Sci-fi setting
5. Which is not at all easy to do when fighting severe depression

It’s all about perspective

So, for part of today (In between procrastinating on the Transformers Wiki* and finishing decorating the kitchen) I’ve been working on a few bits & bobs for my writing.

One of the well.. Exercises threw up a couple of interesting viewpoints and at least one of them shows a possible character in the making. That is, if I ever decide to write that kind of story.

The premise was to begin a story with a given first line. I didn’t write much, as I didn’t feel it needed it. But, as an experiment** I wrote the same scene from the other participants point of view.

Behold: (And there’s a teensy bit of profanity behind the cut)

Sci-Fi flash fiction

Space tore open. A massive flare of exotic radiation danced across the spectrum as a leviathan powered it’s way through the jump gate singularity.

The Terran Hegemony warship Agamemnon erupted; Plasma drives flaring as she accelerated away. Along her flanks, armoured covers retracted from weapon batteries as she woke for the fight to come.

“Transition complete Admiral” came the voice on the bridge.

“Release the frigates; prep for fighter wing launch. Find me the targets.”

“Aye sir.”

The Agamemnon’s attendant battle group, the frigates Encroacher, Comet, Hesperus and Eclipse detached from their parent carrier, each powering forward and prepping their own batteries like attack dogs baring their teeth.

“Battle group away; we have acquired targeting returns.”

“Clear the fighters for launch, get me a full spread of torpedoes ready, maximum yield”

“Aye Admiral”

Shielding retracted along the ventral hull of the Agamemnon, exposing her launch bays. Shrike class space superiority fighters and Mauler class torpedo bombers launching on bright plumes of plasma exhaust like seeds spat from a pod.

“All wings report attack formation. time to target 10 minutes and counting; Torpedoes loaded and ready, Main battery targeting reports locked and ready.”

“Excellent. Any response yet?”

“Picking up engine flare Admiral, looks like they are tying to run.”

“I’m not having that. I want them gone. All batteries, All torpedoes. FIRE!”