The Compulsion

A few days ago my friend Brian made a great post on his blog about his inability to figure out how to write a book. Go read it, like everything Brian writes, it's wonderful. I find that Brian often inspires me to write in times when I'm struggling to write. He makes some great points and asks some great questions about every aspect of book/novel writing, from inspiration to process. It got me thinking about my own experiences writing novels and I decided to sort of respond to Brian's post.

I'm not going to post a point by point response to his post, but I did want to address a few for Brian that could apply to anyone reading this:

• We ALL write a bad memoir (whether we call it a memoir or coming of age fiction) at some point in our careers, usually at the beginning. It's the old adage "write what you know." The thing is that it's those "startling good" moments that keep us going and become the building blocks for what comes later. 
• There's no "wrong" way to do it, but I find that a road map helps. (I know you like analog tools and while GPS is far more effective, road maps are more interesting.)
• Don't compare yourself to others. You say Stephen King and I raise you Brandon Sanderson, who seems to release a 1200 page epic every eighteen months. 
• I know people that do the multiple project thing and I've never been able to do it. I also realize that if I have any aspirations to becoming a professional writer I may need to learn how to spin as many plates as possible. But like I said earlier, there's no wrong way to do this thing.

Before I continue, I need to address the elephant in the room. While I've written books, I am still unpublished. I've come close. I've had an agent-twice. I've been told by an editor that my stuff was as good as anything out there, but was too long for their house. Please take everything I'm saying here with a big old slab of salt. 

Writing any kind of book, especially a novel, is a slog. It's insane in concept alone. Think about it. Let's take what the voices in our head are saying and commit them to paper, taking the impulses of our imagination and hoping they transfer from our brain through a pen or keyboard in a coherent manner that people will want to read. Hours of work, sweat, tears, vexing frustration, soul crushing self doubt and the occasional breakdown over the placement of a single, innocuous word like is. And if you are doing it right, it is an uncontrollable, unavoidable compulsion. 

Brian calls it the "return." He's 100% right. It's a call. A compulsion. That's what writing any project is, it's a return to that project. The only problem is that sometimes that call is little more than a suggestive whisper from across the room at Hungry Chuck's on a Wednesday night in the early 90s.

Me ignoring the "call" because it was too loud at Chuck's!

Life will always get in the way. It gets in the way of everything. Kids have lacrosse games and piano lessons. Houses need cleaning and driveways need snow blowing. Dinner doesn't make itself. Plans don't write themselves and I have yet to create an assignment that assesses and grades itself. You get the point. However, a good book pulls at you, whether you are reading it or writing it. That's the "return" that Brian is talking about. It's uncontrollable and unavoidable compulsion. You can't put it off. The writing wants to come out. The story wants to be told. The information wants to be shared. You find yourself scribbling in your notebook while your kids are swimming or on the back of an envelope while everyone is watching the football game on Thanksgiving night.

Every project I've worked on, from the nine novels/novellas I finished to the dozen or so projects that I've started but haven't gotten around to finish yet, has taken a wide assortment to finish. From several years to a few months, it's all varied. Every project is different. I wish that I worked quicker. Or at least more efficiently than I do now. I'm notoriously lazy. The key is that I could never completely turn away from the project. I've got plenty of false starts, but it's the projects that get their hooks into you that make you move forward, writing or revising page after page.

You can't put a timer on what you do. That can be crushing. Art takes time. I try not to set a calendar for my work. I find when I set a goal measured by what I produce, I never meet it. In the end, that works against you. You become filled with regret and self-loathing that you didn't reach that goal. A project takes as long as it needs to take before it's "done." Remember DaVinci said "Art is never finished, only abandoned."

Looking back, I'm all over the place. I'm sure if I kept better track of how much time I spent writing, which is my new metric of writing, I'd have a clearer picture of how much time it actually took me to write something. Most of my projects, from gestation to completion, took years and overlapped one another. I never work linearly. I believe in taking breaks between drafts so I can look at a project with new eyes.

The thing about all these projects was that I couldn't ignore the call to write the thing. Each project has had it's distractions, things that called me away. End of the marking period. Family emergencies. Vacations. Requests for a rewrite. But I always came back. They called to me. I couldn't ignore it. It demanded my attention.

Interestingly enough, this post, a simple post of a few hundred words took three days for me to compose, edit and put on my blog. But I kept coming back to it. As Brian said, I kept returning. That's the key. You have to keep coming back to it. Sometimes it's hours, days, weeks, months or even years, but the book always pulls you back.

I'm sure all of this sounds preachy and kind of sanctimonious. Take it for what it's worth. For now, I'm going to kick my latest novel project and try to get it singing so I can answer the compulsion. 

The Little Barrel Maker Redux

I posted this two years ago. I'm reposting it now with some changes to the preamble, but the poem remains the same. Enjoy

A few years back I participated in the Seven Valley's Writing Project, a high intensive writing program for teachers, and it's left an indelible mark on me as a teacher and as a writer. I wish there were more opportunities to participate in things like it and maybe something I do in 2017 is make more time for things like it. One of the things that we picked up was the concept of a found poem. A found poem is taking a line or two from something you've read and turning it into a poem. That year I did a found poem with my students while doing the play Fences. You all know my love of the play, so this was an important assignment. I'm telling you this for a reason.

Today is February 18th. That serious little man turns six today. At 2:20 on February 18, 2013, Cooper John Zeleznik was plucked into the world much the same as MacBeth. A few years later the line "I don't want him to be like me. I want him to move as far away from my life as he can get" was striking a serious chord with me and I wrote this poem about my son:

The day he was born was cold,
But he was warm like the spring.

Cool gray eyes in a tiny pink body
That shivered in the winter air.

Forty hid around the corner from me,
Yet this little barrel maker was fresh and new.

Well worn and weary,
I looked down at him
Feeling old, tired,
Filled with paths not taken.

Anger and
Frustration
Smoldering in my chest.

But that is not the path for him.

I wonder if my father thought the same thing,
Forty years earlier,
Looking down at my cherubic face
On a snowy eve in Astoria, Queens.

My path was different than his,
But not as much as I'd like to think.
And that makes me sad.

As I look down at my little barrel maker
I say, "I don't want you to be like me.
I want you to move
As far away from my life as you can get."

Then I wonder if saying it out loud is enough.

With a heavy sigh,
I stroke the soft cheek with an ashy knuckle
And whisper "I love you" to a fuzzy ear.

Happy birthday Cooper, Daddy loves you. (That's not part of the poem.)

Atta Boy

I've been limping my way through January. It hasn't exactly been the start I wanted for 2019. I don't know what it is, but haven't been as active as I wanted. Maybe it's the weather, which has been horrible. Brutally and relentlessly cold, which isn't much of a surprise considering it's January in Central New York, it's been something of a drag. Maybe it's a degree of frustration I'm having with the WIP. I feel like I'm doing to much in the story and I need to simplify what I'm doing so I can get to the meat of the story. I'm at what should be the jumping off point for the middle act and I just can't seem to get there. I'm resisting the urge to "half draft" it, meaning I go back to the beginning and clean it up. (I'm pretty sure I've talked about half-drafting before but I'm too lazy to look for it.) I want to just write it, so I'm thinking I should just dive into the middle part and be done with the wembling.

For the sake of sanity and, more importantly, precious energy, I've back burnered the BDB. This isn't a bad or disappointing thing, it's just I feel like I need to put it away for a bit. It's not ready and it needs to marinate a bit, though I am keeping it open enough that if I'm moved in some way by an idea related to it, I can attack it.

Yet, I still feel like I'm struggling a bit.

Earlier in the week, I was perusing my social networks and I came across this tweet by the co-creator of the classic CHAPPELLE'S SHOW:

I was moved and, in a weird way, inspired by this.

Burt Reynolds is a legend. SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT is a formative movie. As is CANNONBALL RUN. His dramatic turn in BOOGIE NIGHTS is an all time great performance. He was an icon. His trademark mustache and laugh. His undeniable swagger and charm. He was masculinity defined, especially to a chubby kid on Long Island. Even a little bit of the chubby man from Syracuse. Knowing that the great Burt Reynolds needed someone to pat him on the back and telling him that he was doing a good job is reassuring. Knowing that the man's man, Burt Reynolds, needed affirmation and reassurance just like me is comforting.

We're made to feel guilty for wanting affirmation. I'm guilty of it with my students. I've never been big on affirmation, but there's value in it. We all want to hear someone tell us we're worth something or that we're doing a good job. And too many times, there isn't anyone around or willing. We're called snowflakes or soft because we crave that acknowledgement. When you feel like that, just remember, even the Bandit needed someone to remind him that he was doing a good job.

And if that fails, shoot me a text, a DM, an email or slide up in my inbox, because everyone deserves an "atta boy" and I'm happy to give it to you. 

Encouraged

A few days ago, I wrote about being discouraged and how my daughter's attitude moved me to try and be more encouraged. Time has passed. My students' project deadline looms and I see the work they are doing. It's not good. (Let's just say the phrase "when did I teach you that" has been used a lot this week.) I received two impersonal rejections on a project that really, really stung. There's no amount of Natalie chutzpah that's going to fix the overwhelming feeling of discouragement sliding towards complete and total worthlessness I'm now feeling. . But I've had some moments in the last few weeks that are at least helping.

On New Years' Eve, my wife and I bought a new car. It's a long story for another time, but for much of the afternoon of the last day of the sort of crappy year that 2018 was, we spent it in and out of our new car, doing paperwork and learning about the car. As I was standing in the cold afternoon air, a silver sedan came down the aisle and stopped suddenly. Out of the driver's seat jumped a well-dressed, handsome young man with a smile that could light up a room shouting, "Z!" My former student Lossine embraced me and I him. We talked for a few minutes and he said he'd be right back. We talked for a bit before he had to go back to work, but similar to what he said on Twitter, I knew 2019 was going to be good since I ran into him.

Lossine and his twin brother Abu are two of my favorite former students. Bright, friendly, hardworking, joyous young men, they've transcended being former students and I consider them friends. The mere mention of the "Twins" can instantly make me smile. Fast forward to a few nights ago at Natalie's lacrosse game. Before Liverpool took the field, there was a soccer game finishing up. As they left the field, I noticed their coach. It was Abu. I was overjoyed that within a short period of time I got to see the both of them and seeing them thriving makes me feel that maybe I shouldn't be so discouraged by what's happening now.

The Twins are refugees from Liberia. They became American citizens in 2014 and I was honored when they asked me to attend the ceremony. It was moving. When you ask why am I so against the wall and the ban or anything against immigration, the Twins are why. These two amazing young men are now part of the tapestry of our country and part of what makes this country already great.

The final moment is perhaps one of the most humbling experiences in my life. It really is amazing what a few words can do to a person. To my fellow Liverpudlians, we all could name someone at LHS that left an indelible mark on who you are as a person. For me (and for many of you I'd imagine) that teacher was Steven Garraffo. Like me to the Twins, Mr. Garraffo was and always will be known by the single letter moniker of "G." Last Monday, while the kids were at religious ed, my wife and I went to Panera for dinner. Mondays during religion are "date night" for us and usually involve Twin Trees chicken wings, but I was winged out from the weekend, requiring a change of venue.

G was having dinner with his family. While we waited for our order, I went over to say hello, shake his hand and share a "bro" hug. He turned and introduced me to his family.

"This is John Zeleznik, a teacher and writer...and one of my favorite former students."

I was humbled.

I was moved.

For once, I stammered and was momentarily speechless.

To hear that from someone I respected and looked up to thought of me as one of their favorites? I'm not crying, you're crying. I recovered and told his family how important G was to a listless teenager and later to a listless adult considering a career change. Armed with honest advice that sometimes I didn't want to hear and encouragement, G's influence helped make me who I am today. I think it was his turn for me crying not him.

So, gentlemen, thank you for being three encouraging and important figures in my life. You are what I aspire to be and helped form who I am. So, when I'm having a dodgy week, not only can I look to my kids, but I can remember the three of you to encourage me to be and do better.

Discouraged

Friday night my daughter resumed indoor lacrosse. She's been playing steadily since first grade (she's in fifth now) and has gotten better each year. As is often the case, though, some of her teammates have gotten better than her, passing her by. But this hasn't discouraged her from playing the game. She has fun and still wants to get better. This year she noticed that she hadn't been asked to do any tournaments or play in the indoor championship game. She recognizes the gaps in her game and want to improve so she gets invited to tournaments for the summer and fall seasons. The coaches have been great, encouraging and teaching her while giving me some guidance on how to build up the deficiencies in her game. However, during Friday's game I thought I noticed a change in her body language that led me to believe she was discouraged. I want to go out on to the field and hug her, I knew what she was feeling.

I had a dodgy week at school. My nightmare study hall was more nightmarish than usual but it was my regular classes that had me questioning my own worth. All week it felt as if there was no point to the work I put in and by Friday, I was down, really down, and feeling incredibly discouraged. Like Natalie, my body language showed it. I was questioning why was I bothering. My discouragement ground down my resolve. Being told by students I'm not teaching them because I'm unwilling or frustrated that they want me to reteach an entire lesson because they couldn't be bothered to look up from their phones the first time I taught the lesson. It sometimes feels like I'm not there at all and my efforts are pointless. I am pointless. Feeling pointless is the ultimate discouraging feeling.

After the game, Natalie was gassed. She stepped up and played well. Got a few ground balls. Made a crisp pass that set up a teammate to score a goal. Threw some elbows and dug in deep on defense. We talked in the car, as we always do after a game, telling me that she had fun (the most important part of sports in my opinion). She played to her strengths and hustled a little more than usual. We talked about things she should improve on and agreed we'd work some this week. She also said she was tired. It had been a month since she last played and her body needed to catch up. I smiled to myself. I realized she hadn't been discouraged at all. She was just tired. I'd misinterpreted her signals, transposing my own feeling on her. And I'm glad for that. She wasn't disappointed. She's ready to play and get it done.

But I still am. And I'm tired too. But I look to my daughter for inspiration. Maybe I need to let my body catch up. Maybe I need to play to my strengths. Maybe I need to hustle a little more and think about this things I need to improve on.

And maybe, in the end, I just remember I'm doing all of this for Natalie. (And Cooper.)

2018: A Year In Review: The Reading

Not much of a preamble here. For the second year in a row I read over 100 books (YAY audiobooks!). I'm aiming for another 100 this year. I'm going to try to take notes on what I read this year and talk more about it. I don't want this to turn into a review site and doing a review site isn't something I'm particularly interested in doing, but I feel like I should do a better job of noting important things I can or won't use as a writer in everything I read. So, get out your Amazon/Barnes & Noble gift cards, cause here's my best & not so best of 2018. First the top book(s) of the year:

• 1a. FOOTBALL FOR A BUCK by Jeff Pearlman: I've raved about this book a lot because it's that good. I reviewed it here and it moved me to create some different kind of fiction, though I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it. When I know, believe me, I'll let you know. I loved the USFL when it was around and reading about its wild ride was amazing. Pearlman paints a terrific picture and his passion for the subject just oozes in every word. The parallels the book makes to what's going on in the country today, inadvertent or not, make the book more timely than ever.
• 1b. THE POPPY WAR by RF Kuang: This book was a close second to FOOTBALL, so close that I'm calling it 1b since it was by far the best fantasy book I read in 2018. It was everything an epic fantasy should be and more. Huge, tragic, beautiful, savage and breathtaking, it reminded me a lot of Ken Liu's THE GRACE OF KINGS but using a more traditional narrative style. 

The rest of the Best of 2018:

• KNIGHTS VS DINOSAURS by Matt Phelan: Exactly what it says on the cover and it's as fun as it sounds. Along the way there are some interesting twists and turns but in the end it's a fun story about knights taking on dinosaurs. It's a SYFY movie waiting to happen. And I mean that as a compliment.
• DON'T MAKE ME PULL OVER by Richard Ratay: This book was a total surprise to me. I blogged about it here. A great read that is part personal narrative about the author's own experiences and part history of road trips in this country. A fun read. 
• STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI by Jason Fry: A perfect adaptation of a difficult movie to adapt. It does what a good adaptation does: fills in the gaps and adds depth to the narrative. Fry fills it to the brim with nods and references to other SW works that are borderline inside jokes. 
• CADDYSHACK: THE MAKING OF A HOLLYWOOD CINDERELLA STORY by Chris Nashawaty: The story of a comedy classic that is as much a history of modern comedy as it is a story of the movie. 
• THE CARDBOARD KINGDOM by Chad Sell: This book was in the running for best read of the year. A fun story filled with great messages for young and old. It was my daughter's favorite book of the year and it shows in her art. 
• THE LONG WAY TO A SMALL, ANGRY PLANET by Becky Chambers: Firefly with a solarpunk flare. Fun, unique and amazing. 
• STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST/SHOW YOUR WORK by Austin Kleon: I'm late to these. My friend Brian Fay turned me on to them and they are game changers for me. You'll find them to be the same for you. 

Honorable Mention: TRANSFORMERS: ALL HAIL MEGATRON, CRIMES OF GRINDELWALD ORGINAL SCREENPLAY, DC MEETS LOONEY TUNES, ACE OF SHADES and HILLBILLY ELEGY (would've been Best of but I'm weary of the Trump voter narrative). 

Disappointments: THE STAR TOUCHED QUEEN, A CLOSE AND COMMON ORBIT and SPACE OPERA.

So, bring on 2019. I'm ready. 

2018: A Year In Review: The Writing

Well, barring an unprecedented run, I will likely not be finishing anything in the next few days, so it's as good a time as any for everyone's favorite time of year: my review of my writing failures and successes.

Looking back at my end of 2017/looking forward to 2018 post, I read that my goal was to basically work on craft instead of some unobtainable word count for the year.  So, I reached my goal. I worked on my craft, not only working on big writing projects like novels but smaller ones like this blog. I'm happy with the work that I've done this year. I wrote enough to just about fill this year's writer's notebook, which has never happened before. What else did I actually accomplish this year? Let's see.

1. Finished THE GIRL IN THE PICTURE: I'm really happy with this book. It turned out better than I expected, especially considering it was like nothing else I'd ever written. I think this has a ton of potential, but it needs a pretty thorough once over before it's ready for even a beta read. 
2. Started and shelved LAST PERSON STANDING: My attempt at a town wide game of tag while trying to cash in on the FORTNITE/PUBG craze didn't quite catch for me. I still believe in the idea, I'm just not ready to write it. 
3. Rewrote THE LOST SCIONS: I wrote about this before. I'm still waiting to hear back from the agents but these are the waters. 
4. Started RETURN OF THE PRINCE: I hate the title of this. It will change once I figure out a new one, but as a placeholder, it's okay for now. I like this story and it's moving forward. 

All told, I wrote a little over 200k words, not including blogging. It's not as much as I've written in other years, but I really worked on my craft this year, so I wasn't going to have a massive volume of writing either. The disaster that was LAST PERSON STANDING took up a huge chunk of post-GIRL IN THE PICTURE time. I should've listened to my buddy Mike on this one. I did blog quite a bit but not as much as other years. I think, again, it was quality over volume.

I'm really proud of what I've written in the blog this year. It's some of the best personal writing I've been doing and I'd like to do more. My favorite pieces from this year were:

1. EARNING TURNS
2. A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME
3. THE SUNDAY PAPER: IN THREE PARTS
4. PAPERBACK READER
5. WHERE'S MY BARRY MANILOW WARDROBE?

What about 2019? Every year I talk about my plans and intentions, so why should this year be any different? Instead of worrying about word counts this year, I'm going to measure the amount of time I spend writing. Another writer I met through Twitter, Mike Headley, uses a spreadsheet to track his time and productivity. It's a terrific system that I'm going to use this year. I'm not going to worry about word counts. I need to think about time spent writing. And that means ANYTHING to do with writing, including editing, planning, rewriting...EVERYTHING...even daydreaming about a project.

First, let's address the elephant in the room: the BIG DAMN BOOK I talked about. I want to write it, the plot has gotten a little clearer in my head. I'm not putting a hard start date on it. I feel like that's too much pressure. Plus, there are other things I want to work on. Things that are more plausible and salable for an unpublished author. But the BDB isn't going quietly into the night. It's niggling. What DO I want to work on? It's a mixed bag.

• Finish RETURN OF THE PRINCE
• Rewrite GIRL IN THE PICTURE
• Rewrite THE SEVEN LABORS OF NICK JABLONSKY
• Write BDB
• Blog more

There are other ideas, nebulous right now, that I'd like to do, but for now this is what I want to concentrate on. 

As I said, instead of worrying about word count, I'm going to concentrate on time spent writing. I'd like to average one hour a day writing. That's doable. But what about BDB? In that post I said that even if I spend a half an hour a day on it, I could reach a pretty high volume of words/pages. That would leave me with a half an hour a day for other projects. That doesn't make sense to me. Instead, I've decided that I want to average 90 minutes of writing a day. One hour for the "main project" and thirty minutes for the BDB. I have some other thoughts on how to keep up with the BDB, but I'll talk about them when I get to it. 

These are the things I can control in 2019. Everything else related to writing is out of my hands. So bring it 2019, I'm ready.