Setting Goals

Writing is all about setting goals, we're told. Set specific, reasonable goals with quantitative results. I've set such goals before — I've written down "Revise first 10 chapters of Killer Robot manuscript by midnight, June 12" or "send Video Game play to three theater companies by noon, Aug. 12, without going cross-eyed from reading the picky submission guidelines" or "Get up at 5:30 a.m. to write three days a week without killing anyone." These are laudable goals, of course, and I've dutifully created spreadsheets, started treadmill journals and checked off whiteboard to-do lists.

All these goals failed, of course — some rather spectacularly — with blown deadlines, abandoned journals and undignified displays of temper when I couldn't find any Snapple at 5:32 a.m. But even writers need structure, and I can't just sit at my desk every day and mutter dementedly. Well, I could (and often do) but then I should write something too.

So I'm rushing in the opposite direction, with a single, vague goal with only three words: "Write Every Day." Now that doesn't mean I'm actually sitting at my desk writing (insert merry laugh here), because frankly I seem to diddle away a shocking amount of time. For example, today Mr. Killer Robot and Killer Robot Kid went off to Little League baseball practice, which meant prime writing time for me on a Sunday morning. So I spent two hours at my desk. But of course I wasn't writing; I was putting new ink in my printer, setting up my iTunes, setting up my new speakers, finding the perfect spot for my fan, rearranging my bulletin board, and looking for a half-remembered blog post about dips. When my guys arrived home, my desk and bedroom were neat and tidy but my nerves were a mess, because, of course, I'd written nothing.

Then Mr. Killer Robot and I spent a frustrating afternoon trying to arrange his 401(k) contributions, a process that greatly resembled a typical writing session (lots of squinting and muttered cursing, but few tangible results). Then he and the Kid went out again, and now here I am, at my desk writing, but not really writing, just writing about not writing.

I think I'm paralyzed by my newfound freedom. As of Feb. 6, I've reduced my work hours to devote more time to my family and my writing. The family part is working out great: the house is cleaner, the meals are better, I chaperoned an ice-skating field trip and designed a scarecow costume, and Mr. Killer Robot, who is also a journalist, has been on the front page of our newspaper four out of the last five issues. So this is definitely working out personally. But for the writing? Not so much. I did manage to write a short play about a little chess pawn, which was so weird and incoherent, I immediately printed it out and filed it and haven't looked at it yet.

You see, I have six writing projects whirling around in my head, each demanding its time. The last time I felt like this was at my newspaper job last fall, when I was juggling four special publications in various stages of completion. In one five-day period, I was taking one publication to press, making calls on a second one, assigning stories for a third and attending a judging for a fourth.

Fiction projects, however, are different. It doesn't seem to make sense to juggle multiple projects at once, so I'll have to pick one, power it through, then work on the next one. But which do I pick? The short play I just finished, the short story idea? the memoir? the full-length play? Or the novel?

I'm not sure. What I am sure of is that I'm not going to fret much about publication this year. I'm not going to read much about publication either, since it's too depressing. According to the writing mags, I'm more likely to be killed by a meteor in the shape of Elvis' head than to actually get anything published. So I'll just concentrate on finishing 3-6 of these writing projects this year, just churning them out, powering through carpal tunnel and writers' block, and worry about publication in 2013.

And to do that, all I need to do is follow a single goal:

WRITE EVERY DAY.

White King's Pawn

I just finished writing my first new play since I left Michigan in 2007. The need to write another play must have been growing in me for some time, since it took only a few days into my reduced work schedule to churn it out.

I've been working on the play for some time, organizing and preparing my thoughts, writing outlines, setting up a Scrivener template for it. Then today I sat down and started a new Scrivener document and just started writing it. Four hours later — with only a short break — I finished it. It's 17 pages long.

I don't know if it's any good. I don't know if it's worth working further on. I don't know if it will ever be worth submitting. But it's been growing in me since December and it just burst out somehow.

It's a play about a chess game, called "White Queen's Pawn." I got the idea when I started taking chess up again in December. I bought a book at a used bookstore called "Chess Basics" and started working through the lessons on my son Benny's new chessboard. Then I bought another book called "Great Short Games of the Chess Masters" and started working through those.

I am definitely not a natural at chess. Most of the time I don't understand the games I'm acting out. But there's something satisfying about re-enacting a chess game played in Ostend in 1906 or Vienna in 1872 or Riga in 1937.

I was particularly struck by the second game in the book, which introduced a game played in Kaschau in 1893. In this game, the White King's Pawn advanced across the entire chessboard and was a key actor in the amazing finish. The game was so dramatic I played it several times, then showed it to Benny, who nodded politely and went back to his Madden Playstation game.

I couldn't stop thinking about the game, however, and found myself wondering what it would be like to see this game from the little pawn's point of view, the same little pawn who miraculously made it across the board through so many perils and was present at the dramatic finish. I played the game once more and took notes as if I were the pawn: who I was threatening, who was threatening me, what pieces were around me, who was protecting me, who I was protecting.

But it wasn't until I sat down today that I felt ready to actually do it. I approached the script in a very systematic way, letting the natural drama of the game be my plot. Suddenly the characters appeared: the brave little pawn, the brooding king, the sweet queen, the pious bishop and glory-seeking knight, the cunning enemy pawns. The little pawn was like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, advancing bravely into the dark forest following her own brick road to fulfill her wish. I tried to create a narrative trajectory that began a naive little pawn starting her first game and ending ... well ending in a very different place.

I don't know what I'm trying to say with this play -- I've put it away and I can't bear to look at it right now -- but I think the script talks about courage and persistence and ultimately, forgiveness. The Bishop, who started out as a smug strawman for the other pieces to make fun of, turned out to be a vital figure, providing some moral heft to the play.

Perhaps, in the end, this play was about choice: both the chess players and the pieces. For in this play, the chess pieces can influence the game, there's a special, invisible connection between the player and the pieces. A piece can force the player to move impulsively before the player has a chance to think it through, or it can refuse to move, forcing the player to change his or her mind and find another way, possibly to the ruin of all.

For each step the Pawn takes, she must decide to take it. Sometimes she moves from a dangerous square to a protected one. But sometimes she must leave a protected square and forge ahead all alone. At one point she moves from a safe square to a very dangerous one, but she chooses to do it for the good of her comrades, to find that the square was safe after all.

Pawns, by their very definition, are not supposed to have a choice. Their purpose is to be used and sacrificed. But in my play, the pawn has turned the tables and her choices determined the fate of the game.

The Press of Time

I've been taking a little time to think about time these days, and the way I manage it — or don't manage it — and how I can get more of it to write. I'm in heavy negotiations with my newspaper about reducing my hours, which feels very counterintuitive in this tough economy. I feel a bit guilty in a country grappling with 9.1 percent unemployment — with many family and friends either underemployed, unemployed or tenuously employed — to be discussing a two-day work week.

And not only did I request a two-day workweek, but I rejected my newspaper's offer of a full-time staff editing job, actually the same job I held during the dot-com boom. True, the position was shaping up to be a big, steaming plate of awful, with all kinds of new demands. But turning down a full-time job in a reeling economy is a scary thing to do. Killer Robot Husband was in full support of my decision, thankfully, or I don't know if I'd have had the nerve to say no.

Two life priorities drove this decision: my family and my writing. I’m feeling the press of time – I don’t have two years of my life right now to be Senior Editor Extraordinaire. I’ve been a SEE already, I don’t need to do it again. I couldn’t just take the job and quit after a year – I’d have to do it for at least two. That’s two years of missing much of Little Robot's childhood and schooldays, precious days when he actually wants me around. That’s two prime writing years set aside. That’s two more years before life can settle down a bit and allow Killer Robot Husband to focus on his own career.

And for what? So I can repeat the success I achieved 10 years ago under worse conditions? To prove I can exceed expectations with twice the work and a kid to boot?

So I said no. And whether I work under reduced hours or leave the paper entirely and freelance, the next two years will be all about the writing. I've been trying to get a writing career started since I entered journalism in the 90s, and every year it becomes more difficult for new writers to get published. I can't help feel that if I'm ever going to break into publishing, it must be done soon. I cringe when I think of the time I've wasted in the past and pray I'm finally disciplined and mature enough to truly take advantage of this gift of time.

Back in the Saddle Again

Get along, you varmint characters!

Well, I'm back from a cross-country family vacation -- 11 states and 2,900 miles in 7 days -- across the American West and and I'm ready to start writing again. A five-month work project involving cleantechnology companies has finally ended. Honestly, the whole thing was a horror. Strong language, I'll admit, but you try writing 30 headlines about sustainabiilty and see what it does to your attitude. The whole thing went to press on June 10 and all I wanted to do that weekend was bury some toxic waste in the backyard and watch it seep into the groundwater.

But enough of that, it's time to push forward. I've revived my dormant science fiction novel, "Killer Robots Never Work" and am preparing to submit it to a publisher that claims to like sci-fi with female main characters. I rewrote the synopsis because frankly, the synopsis I wrote last year was awful. Obviously I followed the Kitchen Sink school of synopsis writing. I'm not surprised none of the agents I queried wanted it. Bleah. I stripped the whole thing down to 500 words and limited it to four characters and took out all that stuff I liked best, which is what everybody tells you to do anyway. Actually I did leave in the Monet digital sunsets and creepy insurance agent and the volcano belching gooey tar, plus malfunctioning assassin robots killing potted plants because yes I'm self-indulgent, sue me. I feel better now.

I'm hoping to get some momentum going here, shopping around a novel and a play and working on a memoir. I keep freezing up while writing this memoir because I can't help wondering what people will say, but if I'm not brutally honest, the memoir won't be worth reading. The memoir is set in 2007-2008 during the financial crisis and right now I'm reading "Too Big to Fail" by Andrew Ross Sorkin. Reading about Wall Street bankers' greed and egotism makes me see red and keeps me plugging away at my memoir. The recession and our own foolishness nearly wiped us out that year and only luck and a providential short sale kept us afloat.

This is my first memoir -- except for my newspaper work, I'm generally a fiction writer. The manuscript is already going weird on me. It addresses all these serious issues and the stakes were so high, yet dark humor keeps creeping into the pages, like I'm making fun of my own fear. Perhaps Andrew Ross Sorkin has given me an idea for the title: "Too Small to Succeed."

To Do List

So "Killer Robots" went underground for a few months, but I haven't given up on my literary ambitions, which still follow me around like resentful cat. I feed it little scraps of rough drafts, but most provide little nourishment and instead stink up my psyche like old fish heads. Sigh.

Most writers, of course, are familiar with the following vicious cycle, which nicely sums up my writing life over the last six months:

Act I

1. Set time aside for writing.
2. Make to do lists.
3. Read writing blogs.
4. Write in my blogs.
5. Actually put myself in front of a computer with time blocked out.
6. Discover I lack something vital: a file, a book, a set of notes, a printout.
7. Either find the item or work around it.
8. Get frustrated by the delay.
9. Finally give up.

Let's say I actually manage to get everything together at once and start working. then the cycle continues like this:

Act II

10. Work on writing. It's slow and awkward but I'm doing it.
11. Write regularly for a while.
13. Life intervenes: a vacation, an illness, a sick pet, an evil work project, etc.
14. Momentum breaks down.
15. Get frustrated.
16. Finally give up.
17. Brood about not writing
18: Repeat steps 1-9.
19: Repeat steps 10-17.
20: Go crazy.

So right now I'm on Step 7, and to prove I'm on Step 7, I have a To-Do List.

TO DO LIST

Project One: Completed science fiction novel "Killer Robots Never Work"
I've failed to find the analysis of the novel sent by the Pretty Nervous Writing Aardvarks (See Step Six) but will soldier on.
- rework synopsis and cover letter
- send it all out to the infinite array of markets for goofy science fiction novels with lots of geology.

Project Two: Completed short play "The Video Game."
The place I wanted to send this play closed its reading period April 30, but again, I soldier on.
- find new places to send my Video Game guys Frank and Ed.
- prepare "The Video Game."
- send play out.
- bonus: I found a playwriting group in Berkeley that meets once a month and I'm considering joining.

Project Three: Memoir in progress.
- keep writing all thoughts about memoir in notebook

Retired Project: Stealth Novel. Yes, I finished my NaNoWriMo novel last month! Read about it here.

So I'm sending out a play and a novel and writing a memoir, which seems a respectable To Do List. Feel free to place bets now on whether I'll be on Step 9 by July 4.

My New Collaborator

So I was eating dinner with my son Benny last night — frozen French fries and cold rotisserie chicken, hey, I was tired — and he asked me to read my Stealth Novel to him.

I've mentioned little bits about the novel since starting it in November, mostly to explain why I was tapping on a laptop in the corner after work while he plays video games. I update him every so often, telling him how the main character fell down a well, another has escaped a bad guy and a third character thinks he's corn. (Seriously, he has to be dragged in from the cornfield every night, shouting “Don’t break me from my stalk untimely!”) Benny thinks it's all very weird and regularly asks for updates.

So I started reading it to him and now he's making suggestions. My bad guy has to take a Swamp Test and Benny is helping me decide what this will involve. (Apparently pfu pfu birds, alligators and piranhas are essential components.)

I fretted a little a bit about this, because, well, I like to fret. I didn't think it would be a problem for Benny, since I skim over the blood and creepiness and sex stuff. Plus, it's good for a kid to see people do creative things. But I worried that perhaps it would screw up the writing a little bit. I mean, when I started this novel, it wasn't aimed at the seven-year-old kid audience. Would I start censoring myself and ruin its spooky, politically involved and somewhat disturbing tone?

But then I wrote a long scene in the bad guy's tent that's so um ... unsuitable that the only part I can read to Benny is where the two characters left through a melting wall. So I think I'm okay there.

I still plan to include the Swamp Test, though.

Updated Word Count: 33,000 words. Yay yay!

March 8: 36,396 words. Yay!

Stealth Novel Reborn AGAIN

Like a long friendship or an old datacenter, my NaNoWriMo novel never dies. I abandoned it in mid-November, then revived it on Jan. 3. Now it's Jan. 24 and I've opened the document again, hitting the 28,000 word mark this morning. All my characters are on the move: by foot, by wagon, by royal cavalcade. Where are they going? Well, I'd be the last to know. But it's going to involve a Swamp Test. (Yeah, you read that right.)

I have a new computer now, a13-inch Mac Powerbook, and a nifty backpack to put it in. So I'm all set to take my writing on the road myself. So far I've been mostly using the computer to check Facebook and stream movies from Netflix, but I have bigger goals than reruns of The Tudors — really.

After all, according to my automated NaNoWriMo Report Card, it's only Nov. 17 and it says: "You've fallen a bit behind, but one or two more big pushes and you should be back in business." I've saved all my NaNo pep talks, and the first one says:

Don't forsake your kingdom if it starts to seem silly or pointless, or you have no idea what your next order ought to be. Any command will do! Your characters, the weather, the birds and whales, the flow of the rivers, the path of destiny, and every last plot element all bend to your whim.

So I am once more a creator of worlds -- or at least one deeply neurotic world. At my current pace, I should be finished with my NaNo novel by January 2012 — kidding! Actually Valentine's Day is my goal so I can reward myself with a big box of chocolate (in addition to any other candy I may receive — I'm looking at you, Killer Robot Husband. Think dark chocolate cremes.)